Section tiSLy    1 

No. Copy ' 


^p  Kei).  eiSlafiMnston  0laliIiciu 


THE   LORD'S   PRAYER.     New  Edition.     i6mo,  gilt 
top,  Jl.OO. 

APPLIED  CHRISTIANITY.    Moral  Aspects  of  Social 
Questions.     i6mo,  gilt  top,  $1.25. 

WHO   WROTE  THE    BIBLE?     i6mo,  $1.25. 

HOUGHTON,   MIFFLIN   AND  COMPANY, 
Boston  and  New  York. 


PVho  lurote  the  Bible? 


A  BOOK   FOR   THE   PEOPLE 


BY 


WASHINGTON   GLADDEN 


bxen  all 


BOSTON    AND    NEW    YORK 

HOUGHTON,  MIFFLIN   AND   COMPANY 

(Cbe  fiitJcrgiDe  l?ress,  ^TamfanDge 

1891 


Copyright,  i8gi, 
By  WASHINGTON  GLADDEN. 


All  rights  reserved. 


The  Riverside  Press,  Cambridge,  Mass. ,  U.S.A. 
Electrotyped  and  Printed  by  H.  O.  Houghton  &  Co. 


CONTENTS. 


CHAPTER  PAGB 

I.  A  Look  into  the  Hebrew  Bible     ...  i 

II.   What  did  Moses  write? 17 

III.  Sources  of  the  Pentateuch     ....        44 

IV,  The  Earlier  Hebrew  Histories         .        .        .71 
V.   The  Hebrew  Prophecies loi 

VI.  The  Later  Hebrew  Histories     ....  144 

VII.  The  Poetical  Books 177 

VIII.  The  Earlier  New  Testament  Writings   .        .  207 

IX.  The  Origin  of  the  Gospels       ....      237 

X.  New  Testament  History  and  Prophecy    .        .  267 

XI.  The  Canon 298 

XII.  How  the  Books  were  written    ....  327 

XIII.  How  much  is  the  Bible  worth  ?     .        .        -351 


WHO   WROTE    THE    BIBLE? 


CHAPTER   I. 

A   LOOK    INTO    THE    HEBREW   BIBLE. 

The  aim  of  this  volume  is  to  put  into  compact 
and  popular  form,  for  the  benefit  of  intelligent 
readers,  the  principal  facts  upon  which  scholars 
are  now  generally  agreed  concerning  the  literary- 
history  of  the  Bible.  The  doctrines  taught  in 
the  Bible  will  not  be  discussed  ;  its  claims  to  a 
supernatural  origin  will  not  be  the  principal  mat- 
ter of  inquiry ;  the  book  will  concern  itself  chiefly 
with  those  purely  natural  and  human  agencies 
which  have  been  employed  in  writing,  transcrib- 
ing, editing,  preserving,  transmitting,  translating, 
and  publishing  the  Bible. 

The  writer  of  this  book  has  no  difficulty  in  be- 
lieving that  the  Bible  contains  supernatural  ele- 
ments. He  is  ready  to  affirm  that  other  than 
natural  forces  have  been  employed  in  producing 
it.  It  is  to  these  superhuman  elements  in  it  that 
reference  and  appeal  are  most  frequently  made. 
But  the  Bible  has  a  natural  history  also.  It  is  a 
book  among  books.     It  is  a  phenomenon  among 


2  lVI/0    WROTE    THE   BIBLE? 

phenomena.  Its  origin  and  growth  in  this  world 
can  be  studied  as  those  of  any  other  natural  ob- 
ject can  be  studied.  The  old  apple-tree  growing 
in  my  garden  is  the  witness  to  me  of  some  tran- 
scendent truths,  the  shrine  of  mysteries  that  I 
cannot  unravel.  What  the  life  is  that  was  hid- 
den in  the  seed  from  which  it  sprang,  and  that 
has  shaped  all  its  growth,  coordinating  the  forces 
of  nature,  and  producing  this  individual  form  and 
this  particular  variety  of  fruit,  —  this  I  do  not 
know.  There  are  questions  here  that  no  man  of 
science  can  answer.  Life  in  the  seed  of  the  apple 
as  well  as  in  the  soul  of  man  is  a  mystery.  But 
there  are  some  things  about  the  apple-tree  that 
may  be  known.  I  may  know — if  any  one  has 
been  curious  enough  to  keep  the  record  —  when 
the  seed  was  planted,  when  the  shoot  first  ap- 
peared above  the  ground,  how  many  branches  it 
had  when  it  was  five  years  old,  how  high  it  was 
when  it  was  ten  years  old,  when  this  limb  and 
that  twig  were  added,  when  the  first  blossom  ap- 
peared, when  that  branch  was  grafted  and  those 
others  were  trimmed  off.  All  this  knowledge  I 
may  have  gained;  and  in  setting  forth  these  facts, 
or  such  as  these,  concerning  the  natural  history 
of  the  tree,  I  do  not  assume  that  I  am  telling  all 
about  the  life  that  is  in  it.  In  like  manner  we 
may  study  the  origin  and  growth  of  the  Bible 
without  attempting  to  decide  the  deeper  ques- 
tions concerning  the  inspiration  of  its  writers  and 
the  meaning  of  the  truths  they  reveal. 


A   LOOK  INTO    THE  HEBREW  BIBLE.  3 

That  the  Bible  has  a  natural  as  well  as  a  super- 
natural history  is  everywhere  assumed  upon  its 
pages.  It  was  written  as  other  books  are  writ- 
ten, and  it  was  preserved  and  transmitted  as 
other  books  are  preserved  and  transmitted.  It 
did  not  come  into  being  in  any  such  marvelous 
way  as  that  in  which  Joseph  Smith's  "  Book  of 
Mormon,"  for  example,  is  said  to  have  been  pro- 
duced. The  story  is,  that  an  angel  appeared  to 
Smith  and  told  him  where  he  would  find  this 
book  ;  that  he  went  to  the  spot  designated,  and 
found  in  a  stone  box  a  volume  six 'inches  thick, 
composed  of  thin  gold  plates,  eight  inches  by 
seven,  held  together  by  three  gold  rings  ;  that 
these  plates  were  covered  with  writing  in  the 
''  Reformed  Egyptian  "  tongue,  and  that  with  this 
book  were  "  the  Urim  and  the  Thummim,"  a  pair 
of  supernatural  spectacles,  by  means  of  which  he 
was  able  to  read  and  translate  this  "  Reformed 
Egyptian  "  language.  This  is  the  sort  of  story 
which  has  been  believed,  in  this  nineteenth  cen- 
tury, by  tens  of  thousands  of  Mormon  votaries. 
Concerning  the  books  of  the  Bible  no  such  aston- 
ishing stories  are  told.  Nevertheless  some  good 
people  seem  inclined  to  think  that  if  such  stories 
are  not  told,  they  might  well  be  ;  they  imagine 
that  the  Bible  must  have  originated  in  a  manner 
purely  miraculous  ;  and  though  they  know  very 
little  about  its  origin,  they  conceive  of  it  as  a  book 
that  was  written  in  heaven  in  the  English  tongue, 
divided  there  into  chapters  and  verses,  with  head 


4  IVHO  WROTE    THE  BIBLE? 

lines  and  reference  marks,  printed  in  small  pica, 
bound  in  calf,  and  sent  down  to  earth  by  angels 
in  its  present  form.  What  I  desire  to  show  is, 
that  the  work  of  putting  the  Bible  into  its  pres- 
ent form  was  not  done  in  heaven,  but  on  earth  ; 
that  it  was  not  done  by  angels,  but  by  men  ;  that 
it  was  not  done  all  at  once,  but  a  little  at  a  time, 
the  work  of  preparing  and  perfecting  it  extending 
over  several  centuries,  and  employing  the  labors 
of  many  men  in  different  lands  and  long-divided 
generations.  And  this  history  of  the  Bible  as  a 
book,  and  of  the  natural  and  human  agencies  em- 
ployed in  producing  it,  will  prove,  I  trust,  of  much 
interest  to  those  who  care  to  study  it. 

Mr.  Huxley  has  written  a  delightful  treatise  on 
"A  Piece  of  Chalk,"  and  another  on  "The  Cray- 
fish ; "  a  French  writer  has  produced  an  enter- 
taining volume  entitled  "The  Story  of  a  Stick  ;  " 
the  books  of  the  Bible,  considered  from  a  scien- 
tific or  bibliographical  point  of  view,  should  re- 
pay our  study  not  less  richly  than  such  simple, 
natural  objects. 

A  great  amount  of  study  has  been  expended 
of  late  on  the  Scriptures,  and  the  conclusions 
reached  by  this  study  are  of  immense  importance. 
What  is  called  the  Higher  Criticism  has  been 
busy  scanning  these  old  writings,  and  trying  to 
find  out  all  about  them.  What  is  the  Higher 
Criticism?  It  is  the  attempt  to  learn  from  the 
Scriptures  themselves  the  truth  about  their  ori- 
gin.    It  consists  in  a  careful  study  of   the  Ian- 


A   LOOK  INTO    THE   HEBREW  BIBLE.  5 

guage  of  the  books,  of  the  manners  and  customs 
referred  to  in  them,  of  the  historical  facts  men- 
tioned by  them  ;  it  compares  part  with  part,  and    I 
book  with  book,  to  discover  agreements,  if  they 
exist,  and  discrepancies,  that  they  may  be  recon- 
ciled.   This  Higher  Criticism  has  subjected  these 
old  writings  to  such  an  analysis  and  inspection  a 
as  no  other  writings  have  ever  undergone.    Some  ' 
of  this  work  has  undoubtedly  been  destructive. 
It  has  started  out  with  the  assumption  that  these 
books  are  in  no  respect  different  from  other  sa- 
cred books  ;  that  they  are  no  more  a  revelation 
from  God  than  the  Zendavesta  or  the  Nibelungen 
Lied  is  a  revelation  from  God ;  and  it  has  bent 
its  energies  to  discrediting,  in  every  way,  the  ve- 
racity and  the  authority  of  our  Scriptures.     But 
much  of  this  criticism  has  been  thoroughly  can- 
did and  reverent,  even  conservative  in  its  temper 
and  purpose.     It  has  not  been  unwilling  to  look 
at  the  facts ;  but  it  has  held  toward  the  Bible  a 
devout  and  sympathetic  attitude  ;  it  believes  it  to 
contain,  as  no  other  book  in  the  world  contains, 
the   message  of  God   to   men  ;  and   it   has   only 
sousfht  to  learn  from  the  Bible    itself   how  that 
message  has  been  conveyed.     It  is  this  conserva-    ',, 
tive  criticism  whose  leadership  will  be  followed  . 
in  these   studies.     No  conclusions  respecting  the    / 
history  of  these  writings  will  be  stated  which  are., 
not  accepted  by  conservative    scholars.     Never- 1 
theless  it  must  be  remembered  that  the  results  of 
conservative   scholarship  have  been  very  imper- 


6  IV//0  WROTE    THE  BIBLE? 

fectly  reported  to  the  laity  of  the  churches. 
Many  facts  about  the  Bible  are  now  known  by 
intelligent  ministers  of  which  their  congregations 
do  not  hear.  An  anxious  and  not  unnatural  feel- 
ing has  prevailed  that  the  faith  of  the  people  in 
the  Bible  would  be  shaken  if  the  facts  were 
known.  The  belief  that  the  truth  is  the  safest 
thing  in  the  world,  and  that  the  things  which 
cannot  be  shaken  will  remain  after  it  is  all  told, 
has  led  to  the  preparation  of  this  volume. 

I  have  no  doubt,  however,  that  some  of  the 
statements  which  follow  will  fall  upon  some 
minds  with  a  shock  of  surprise.  The  facts  which 
will  be  brought  to  light  will  conflict  very  sharply 
with  some  of  the  traditional  theories  about  the 
Bible.  Some  of  my  readers  may  be  inclined  to 
fear  that  the  foundations  of  faith  are  giving  way. 
Let  me,  at  the  outset,  request  all  such  to  suspend 
their  judgment  and  read  the  book  through  before 
they  come  to  such  a  conclusion.  Doubtless  it 
will  be  necessary  to  make  some  readjustment  of 
theories  ;  to  look  at  the  Bible  less  as  a  miracu- 
lous and  more  as  a  spiritual  product ;  to  put  less 
emphasis  upon  the  letter  and  more  upon  the 
spirit ;  but  after  all  this  is  done  it  may  appear 
that  the  Bible  is  worth  more  to  us  than  it  ever 
was  before,  because  we  have  learned  how  rightly 
to  value  it. 

The  word  "  Bible  "  is  not  a  biblical  word.  The 
Old  Testament  writings  were  in  the  hands  of  the 


A    LOO  A'  /.V7V    THE    HEBREW  BIBLE  7 

men  who  wrote  the  books  of  the  New  Testament, 
but  they  do  not  call  these  writings  the  Bible  ; 
they  name  them  the  Scriptures,  the  Holy  Scrip- 
tures, the  Sacred  Writings,  or  else  they  refer  to 
them  under  the  names  that  were  given  to  specific 
parts  of  them,  as  the  Law,  the  Prophets,  or  the 
Psalms.  Our  word  Bible  comes  from  a  word 
which  began  to  be  applied  to  the  sacred  writings 
as  a  whole  about  four  hundred  years  after  Christ. 
It  is  a  Greek  plural  noun,  meaning  the  books,  or 
the  little  books.  These  writings  were  called  by 
this  plural  name  for  about  eight  hundred  years  ; 
it  was  not  till  the  thirteenth  century  that  they 
began  to  be  familiarly  spoken  of  as  a  single  book. 
This  fact,  of  itself,  is  instructive.  For  though  a  '''  ' 
certain  spiritual  unity  does  pervade  these  sacred  . 
writings,  yet  they  are  a  collection  of  books,  rather!/  [| 
than  one  book.  The  early  Christians,  who  hon-  ^ 
ored  and  prized  them  sufficiently,  always  spoke 
of  them  as  "The  Books,"  rather  than  as  *' The 
Book,"  — and  their  name  was  more  accurate  than 
ours. 

The  names  Old  and  New  Testament  are  Bible 
words  ;  that  is  to  say  we  find  the  names  in  our 
English  Bibles,  though  they  are  not  used  to  de- 
scribe these  books.  Paul  calls  the  old  dispensa- 
tion the  old  covenant ;  and  that  phrase  came 
into  general  use  among  the  early  Christians  as 
contrasted  with  the  Christian  dispensation  which 
they  called  the  new  covenant  ;  therefore  Greek- 
speaking  Christians  used  to  talk  about  '*  the  books 


8  117/0   WROTE    THE   BIBLE? 

of  the  old  covenant,"  and  "  the  books  of  the  new 
covenant  ;  "  and  by  and  by  they  shortened  the 
phrase  and  sometimes  called  the  two  collections 
simply  "  Old  Covenant  "  and  '*  New  Covenant." 
When  the  Latin-speaking  Christians  began  to  use 
the  same  terms,  they  translated  the  Greek  word 
"covenant"  by  the  word  "testament"  which 
means  a  will,  and  which  does  not  fairly  convey 
the  sense  of  the  Greek  word.  And  so  it  was 
that  these  two  collections  of  sacred  writings  be- 
gan to  be  called  The  Old  Testament  and  The 
New  Testament.  It  is  the  former  of  these  that 
we  are  first  to  study. 

When  Jesus  Christ  was  on  the  earth  he  often 
quoted  in  his  discourses  from  the  Jewish  Scrip- 
tures, and  referred  to  them  in  his  conversations. 
His  apostles  and  the  other  New  Testament 
writers  also  quote  freely  from  the  same  Scrip- 
tures, and  books  of  the  early  Christian  Fathers 
are  full  of  references  to  them.  W^hat  were  these 
Jewish  Scriptures  t 

At  the  time  when  our  Lord  was  on  the  earth, 
the  sacred  writings  of  the  Jews  were  collected  in 
two  different  forms.  The  Palestinian  collection, 
so  called,  was  written  in  the  Hebrew  language,  and 
the  Alexandrian  collection,  called  the  Septuagint, 
in  the  Greek.  For  many  years  a  large  colony 
of  devout  and  learned  Jews  had  lived  in  Alexan- 
dria ;  and  as  the  Greek  language  was  spoken 
there,  and  had  become  their  common  speech, 
they  translated  their  sacred  writings  into  Greek. 


.4   LOO  A'  INTO    THE   HEBREW  BIBLE.  9 

This  translation  soon  came  into  general  use,  be- 
cause  there   were    everywhere   many  Jews    who 
knew   Greek  well  enough  but  knew  no  Hebrew 
at  all.     When   our   Lord  was  on  earth,  the  He- 
brew was  a  dead  language  ;  it  may  have  been  the 
language  of  the  temple,  as  Latin  is  now  the  lan- 
guage of  the  Roman  Catholic  mass  ;  but  the  com- 
mon people  did   not  understand  it ;  the  vernac- 
ular of  the  Palestinian  Jews   was  the   Aramaic, 
a  language    similar  to    the    Hebrew,   sometimes 
called  the  later  Hebrew,  and  having  some  such\ 
relation  to  it  as  the  English  has  to  the  German 
tongue.     There  is  some  dispute  as  to  the  time 
when   the  Jews   lost  the   use  of  their  own  lan- 
guage and  adopted   the  Aramaic ;  many  of  the  \ 
Jewish  historians  hold  the  view  that  the  people 
who  came  back  from  the  captivity  to  Jerusalem 
had   learned  to   use   the  Aramaic   as  their  com- 
mon speech,  and  that  the  Hebrew  Scriptures  had 
to  be  interpreted  when  they  were  read  to  them. 
Others  think  that  this  change  in  language  took 
place  a  little  later,  and  that  it  resulted  in  great 
measure  from  the  close  intercourse  of  the  Jews 
with  the  peoples  round  about  them  in  Palestine, 
most  of  whom  used  the  Aramaic.     At  any  rate 
the  change  had  taken  place  before  the  coming 
of  Christ,  so  that   no  Hebrew  was  then  spoken 
familiarly    in     Palestine.      When    ''the    Hebrew 
tongue  "  is  mentioned  in  the  New  Testament  it 
is   the  Aramaic   that  is  meant,  and   not  the  an- 
cient Hebrew.     The  Greek,  on  the  other  hand, 


y 


lO  WHO   WROTE    THE  BIBLE  t 

was  a  living  language  ;  it  was  spoken  on  the 
streets  and  in  the  markets  everywhere,  and  many 
Jews  understood  it  almost  as  well  as  they  did 
their  Aramaic  vernacular,  just  as  many  of  the 
people  of  Constantinople  and  the  Levant  now 
speak  French  more  fluently  than  their  native 
tongues.  The  Greek  version  of  the  Scriptures 
was,  for  this  reason,  more  freely  used  by  the 
Jews  even  in  Palestine  than  the  Hebrew  ori- 
ginal ;  it  was  from  the  Septuagint  that  Christ  and 
his  apostles  made  most  of  their  quotations.  Out 
of  three  hundred  and  fifty  citations  in  the  New 
Testament  from  the  Old  Testament  writings 
about  three  hundred  appear  to  be  directly  from 
the  Greek  version  made  at  Alexandria.  Between 
these  two  collections  of  sacred  writings,  the  one 
written  in  Hebrew,  then  a  dead  language,  and  the 
other  in  Greek,  —  the  one  used  by  scholars  only, 
and  the  other  by  the  common  people, — there 
were  some  important  differences,  not  only  in 
the  phraseology  and  in  the  arrangement  of  the 
books,  but  in  the  contents  themselves.  Of  these 
I  shall  speak  more  fully  in  the  following  chapters. 
It  is  to  the  Hebrew  collection,  which  is  the  ori- 
ginal of  these  writings,  and  from  which  our  Eng- 
lish Old  Testament  was  translated,  that  we  shall 
now  give  our  attention.  What  were  these  He- 
brew Scriptures  of  which  all  the  writers  of  the 
New  Testament  knew,  and  from  which  they  some- 
times directly  quote  } 

The  contents  of  this  collection  were  substan- 


A   I.OOA-  IXTO    TJIE   IlKBRFAV  lUBLK.         II        k 

tially  if  not  exactly  the  same  as  those  of  our  Old  v\ 
Testament,  but  they  were  arranged  in  very  differ- 
ent order.  Indeed  they  were  regarded  as  three 
distinct  groups  of  writings,  rather  than  as  one 
book,  and  the  three  groups  were  of  different  de- 
grees of  sacredness  and  authority.  Two  of  these 
divisions  are  frequently  referred  to  in  the  New 
Testament,  as  The  Law  and  The  Prophets  ;  and 
the  threefold  division  is  doubtfully  hinted  at  in 
Luke  xxiv.  44,  where  our  Lord  speaks  of  the  pre- 
dictions concerning  himself  which  are  found  in 
the  Law  and  the  Prophets  and  in  the  Psalms.  ^ 

The  first  of  these  holy  books  of  the  Jews  was, 
then,  The  Law  contained  in  the  first  five  books/ 
of  our  Bible,  known  among  us  as  the  Pentateuch,] 
and  called  by  the  Jews  sometimes  simply  "  The 
Law,"  and  sometimes  "The  Law  of  Moses."  This 
was  supposed  to  be  the  oldest  portion  of  their 
Scriptures,  and  was  by  them  regarded  as  much 
more  sacred  and  authoritative  than  any  other  por- 
tion. To  Moses,  they  said,  God  spake  face  to 
face  ;  to  the  other  holy  men  much  less  distinctly. 
Consequently  their  appeal  is  most  often  to  the 
law  of  Moses. 

The  group  of  writings  known  as  "  The  Pro- 
phets"  is  subdivided  into  the  Earlier  and  the  . 
Later  Prophets.  The  Earlier  Propliets  comprise  ' 
Joshua,  the  Judges,  the  two  books  of  Samuel, 
counted  as  one,  and  the  two  books  of  the  Kings, 
counted  also  as  one.  The  Later  PropJieis  comprise 
Isaiah,  Jeremiah,  Ezekiel,  and  the  twelve  Minor 


12  IV//0   WROTE    THE   BIBLE? 

Prophets,  the  last  books  in  our  Old  Testament,  — 
Ilosca,  Joel,  Amos,  Obadiah,  Jonah,  Micah,  Na- 
hum,  Habakkuk,  Zephaniah,  Haggai,  Zechariah, 
and  Malachi.  These  tvjoXvQ  were  coufited  as  one 
book;  so  that  there  were  four  volumes  of  the 
earlier  and  four  of  the  later  prophets.  Why  the 
Jews  should  have  called  Joshua,  Judges,  Samuel, 
and  the  Kings  books  of  the  Prophets  is  not  clear ; 
perhaps  because  they  were  supposed  to  have  been 
written  by  prophets  ;  perhaps  because  prophets 
have  a  conspicuous  place  in  their  histories.  This 
portion  of  the  Hebrew  Scriptures,  containing  the 
four  historical  books  named  and  the  fifteen  pro- 
phetical books  (reckoned,  however,  as  four),  was 
regarded  by  the  Jews  as  standing  next  in  sacred- 
ness  and  value  to  the  book  of  the  Law. 

The  third  group  of  their  Scriptures  was  known 
among  them  as  Kethubim,  or  Writings,  simply. 
Sometimes,  possibly,  they  called  it  The  Psalms, 
because  the  book  of  the  Psalms  was  the  initial 
book  of  the  collection.  It  consisted  of  the  Psalms, 
the  Proverbs,  Job,  the  Song  of  Solomon,  Ruth, 
Lamentations,  Ecclesiastes,  Esther,  Daniel,  Ezra, 
Nehemiah,  and  the  Chronicles.  This  group  of 
writings  was  esteemed  by  the  Jews  as  less  sacred 
and  authoritative  than  either  of  the  other  two 
groups ;  the  authors  w^ere  supposed  to  have  had 
a  smaller  measure  of  inspiration.  Respecting 
two  or  three  of  these  books  there  was  also  some 
dispute  among  the  rabbis,  as  to  their  right  to  be 
regarded  as  sacred  Scripture. 


A    LOO  A'  INTO    THE   HEBREW  BIBLE.         I  3 

Such,  then,  were  the  Hebrew  Scriptures  in  the 
days  of  our  Lord,  and  such  was  the  manner  of 
their  arrangement. 

They  had,  indeed,  other  books  of  a  religious 
character,  to  which  reference  is  sometimes  made 
in  the  books  of  the  Bible.  In  Numbers  xxi.  14, 
15,  we  have  a  brief  war  song  quoted  from  "The 
Book  of  the  Wars  of  Jehovah,"  a  collection  of 
which  we  have  no  other  knowledge.  In  Joshua  x. 
13,  the  story  of  the  sun  standing  still  over  Gib- 
eon  is  said  to  have  been  quoted  from  "  The  Book 
of  Jasher,"  and  in  2  Samuel  i.  18,  the  beautiful 
"  Song  of  the  Bow,"  written  by  David  on  the 
death  of  Saul  and  Jonathan,  is  said  to  be  con- 
tained in  the  ''Book  of  Jasher."  It  is  evident 
that  this  must  have  been  a  collection  of  lyrics 
celebrating  some  of  the  great  events  of  Hebrew 
history.  The  title  seems  to  mean  *'  The  Book  of 
the  Just."  The  exploits  of  the  worthies  of  Israel 
probably  furnished  its  principal  theme. 

In  I  Chronicles  xxix.  29,  we  read  :  '*  Now  the 
acts  of  David  the  king,  first  and  last,  behold  they 
are  written  in  the  History  of  Samuel  the  Seer, 
and  in  the  History  of  Nathan  the  Prophet,  and 
in  the  History  of  Gad  the  Seer."  There  is  no 
reason  to  doubt  that  the  first  named  of  these  is 
the  history  contained  in  the  books  of  Samuel  in 
our  Bible  ;  but  the  other  two  books  are  lost.  We 
have  another  reference  to  the  *'  History  of  Na- 
than," in  2  Chronicles  ix.  29, — the  concluding 
words   of   the   sketch    of    King   Solomon's   life : 


14  /r//6»    WROTE    THK   BIBLE  f 

"Now  the  rest  of  the  acts  of  Solomon,  first  and 
last,  are  they  not  written  in  the  History  of  Na- 
than the  Prophet,  and  in  the  Prophecy  of  Ahijah 
the  Shilonite,  and  in  the  Visions  of  Iddo  the  Seer 
concerning  Jeroboam  the  son  of  Nebat  ?"  Here 
are  two  more  books  of  which  we  have  no  other 
knowledge ;  their  titles  quoted  upon  the  page  of 
this  chronicle  are  all  that  is  left  of  them.  A 
similar  reference,  in  the  last  words  of  the  sketch 
of  Solomon's  son  Rehoboam,  gives  us  our  only 
knowledge  of  the  "  Histories  of  Shemaiah  the 
Prophet." 

In  the  Kings  and  in  the  Chronicles,  reference 
is  repeatedly  made  to  the  *'  Books  of  the  Chron- 
icles of  the  Kings  of  Israel,"  and  the  "  Books  of 
the  Chronicles  of  the  Kings  of  Judah,"  under 
which  titles  volumes  that  are  now  lost  are 
brought  to  our  notice.  Undoubtedly  much  of 
the  history  in  the  biblical  books  of  Kings  and 
Chronicles  was  derived  from  these  ancient  an- 
nals. They  are  the  sources  from  which  the  writ- 
ers of  these  books  drew  their  materials. 

We  are  also  told  in  2  Chronicles  xxvi.  22,  that 
Isaiah  wrote  a  history  of  the  "Acts  of  Uzziah," 
which  is  wholly  lost. 

Other  casual  references  are  made  to  historical 
writings  of  various  sorts,  composed  by  prophets 
and  seers,  and  thus  apparently  accredited  by  the 
biblical  writers  as  authoritative  utterances  of  di- 
vine truth.  Why  were  they  suffered  to  perish  ? 
Has  not  Emerson  certified  us  that 


A   LOOK'  INTO    THE  HEBREW  BIBLE.         1 5 

*'  One  accent  of  the  Holy  Ghost 
The  heedless  world  has  never  lost"  ? 

But  this  is  a  fond  exaggeration.  Mr.  Emerson 
was  certainly  not  himself  inspired  when  he  ut 
tered  it.  Many  and  many  an  accent  of  the  Holy 
Ghost  has  been  lost  by  this  heedless  world.  And 
it  is  not  at  all  improbable  that  some  of  these  his- 
tories of  Nathan  and  Gad  and  Shemaiah  held  vi- 
tal and  precious  truth,  —  truth  that  the  world  has 
needed.  The  very  fact  that  they  are  hopelessly 
lost  raises  some  curious  questions  about  the 
method  of  revelation.  Is  it  to  be  supposed  that 
the  Providence  which  suffers  whole  books  to  be 
lost  by  men  would  infallibly  guarantee  those  that 
remain  against  errors  in  the  copies,  and  other 
imperfections  ?  As  a  matter  of  fact,  we  know 
that  He  has  not  so  protected  any  of  them. 

Still  I  doubt  not  that  Providence  has  kept  for 
us  the  best  of  this  Hebrew  literature.  To  say 
that  it  is  the  best  literature  that  the  world  has 
produced  is  to  say  very  little.  It  is  separated 
widely  from  all  other  sacred  writings.  Its  con- 
structive ideas  are  as  far  above  those  of  the  other 
books  of  religion  as  the  heavens  are  above  the 
earth.  I  pity  the  man  who  has  had  the  Bible  in 
his  hand  from  his  infancy,  and  who  has  learned 
in  his  maturer  years  something  of  the  literature 
of  the  other  religions,  but  who  now  needs  to  have 
this  statement  verified.  True  it  is  "that  we  find 
pure  maxims,  elevated  thoughts,  genuine  faith, 
lofty  morality,  in  many  of  the  Bibles  of  the  other 


1 6  WHO    WROTE    THE  BIBLE? 

races.  True  it  is  that  in  some  of  them  visions 
are  vouchsafed  us  of  the  highest  truths  of  reli- 
gion, of  the  very  substance  of  the  gospel  of  the 
Son  of  God.  But  when  we  take  the  sacred 
books  of  the  other  religions  in  their  entirety,  and 
compare  them  with  the  sacred  writings  of  the 
Hebrews,  the  superiority  of  these  in  their  funda- 
mental ideas,  in  the  conceptions  that  dominate 
them,  in  the  grand  uplifting  visions  and  purposes 
that  vitalize  them,  can  be  felt  by  any  man  who 
has  any  discernment  of  spiritual  realities.  It  is 
in  these  great  ideas  that  the  value  of  these  writ- 
ings consists,  and  not  in  any  petty  infallibility  of 
phrase,  or  inerrancy  of  statement.  They  are  the 
record,  as  no  other  book  in  the  world  is  a  record, 
of  that  increasing  purpose  of  God  which  runs 
through  the  ages. 

I  hope  that  it  will  appear  as  the  result  of  our 
studies,  that  one  may  continue  to  reverence  the 
Scriptures  as  containing  a  unique  and  special  rev- 
elation from  God  to  men,  and  yet  clearly  see  and 
frankly  acknowledge  the  facts  concerning  their 
origin,  and  the  human  and  fallible  elements  in 
them,  which  are  not  concealed,  but  lie  upon  their 
very  face. 


CHAPTER   II. 

WHAT    DID    MOSES    WRITE  ? 

We  are  now  to  study  the  first  five  books  of 
the  Bible,  known  as  the  Pentateuch.  This  word 
"  Pentateuch  "  is  not  in  the  Bible  ;  it  is  a  Greek 
word  signifying  literally  the  Five-fold  Work ; 
from  pcnia^  five,  and  teuc/ios,  which  in  the  later 
Greek  means  roll  or  volume. 

The  Jews  in  the  time  of  our  Lord  always  con- 
sidered these  five  books  as  one  connected  work  ; 
they  called  the  whole  sometimes  "  Torah,"  or 
"  The  Law,"  sometimes  **  The  Law  of  Moses," 
sometimes  "The  Five-fifths  of  the  Law."  It 
was  originally  one  book,  and  it  is  not  easy  to  de- 
termine at  what  time  its  division  into  five  parts 
took  place. 

Later  criticism  is  also  inclined  to  add  to  the 
Pentateuch  the  Book  of  Joshua,  and  to  say  that 
the  first  six  books  of  the  Bible  were  put  into  their 
present  form  by  the  same  hand.  "The  Hexa- 
teuch,"  or  Six-fold  Work,  has  taken  the  place  in 
these  later  discussions  of  the  Pentateuch,  or  Five- 
fold Work.  Doubtless  there  is  good  reason  for 
the  new  classification,  but  it  will  be  more  con- 
venient to  begin  with  the  traditional  division  and 


1 8  WHO    WROTE    THE   BIBLE? 

speak  first  of  the  five  books  reckoned  by  the  later 
Jews  as  the  "  Torah,"  or  the  Five-fifths  of  the 
Lavi^. 

Who  wrote  these  books  ?  Our  modern  Hebrew 
Bibles  give  them  the  general  title,  "  Quinqiie 
Libri  Mosis."  This  means  "The  Five  Books  of 
Moses."  But  Moses  could  never  have  given  them 
this  title,  for  these  are  Latin  words,  and  it  is  not 
possible  that  Moses  should  have  used  the  Latin 
language  because  there  was  no  Latin  language 
in  the  world  until  many  hundreds  of  years  after 
the  day  of  Moses.  The  Latin  title  was  given  to 
them,  of  course,  by  the  editors  who  compiled 
them.  The  preface  and  the  explanatory  notes  in 
these  Hebrew  Bibles  are  also  written  in  Latin. 

But  over  this  Latin  title  in  the  Hebrew  Bible 
is  the  Hebrew  word  "  Torah."  This  was  the 
name  by  which  these  books  were  chiefly  known 
among  the  Jews  ;  it  signifies  simply  "The  Law." 
This  title  gives  us  no  information,  then,  concern- 
ing the  authorship  of  these  books. 

When  we  look  at  our  English  Bibles  we  find 
no  separation,  as  in  the  Hebrew  Bible,  of  these 
five  books  from  the  rest  of  the  Old  Testament 
writings,  but  we  find  over  each  one  of  them  a 
title  by  which  it  is  ascribed  to  Moses  as  its  au- 
thor, —  "  The  First  Book  of  Moses,  commonly 
called  Genesis;"  "The  Second  Book  of  Moses, 
commonly  called  Exodus  ;  "  and  so  on.  But  when 
I  look  into  my  Hebrew  Bible  again  no  such  title 
is  there.  Nothing  is  said  about  Moses  in  the 
Hebrew  title  to  Genesis.  ' 


WHAT  DID   MOSES   WRITE?  I9 

It  is  certain  that  if  Moses  wrote  these  books 
he  did  not  call  them  "  Genesis,"  '*  Exodus," 
"  Leviticus,"  "  Numbers,"  **  Deuteronomy  ;"  for 
these  words,  again,  come  from  languages  that  he 
never  heard.  Four  of  them  are  Greek  words,  and 
one  of  them,  Numbers,  is  a  Latin  word.  These 
names  were  given  to  the  several  books  at  a  very 
late  day.  What  are  their  names  in  the  Hebrew 
Bible  }  Each  of  them  is  called  by  the  first  word, 
or  some  of  the  first  words  in  the  book.  The  Jews 
were  apt  to  name  their  books,  as  we  name  our 
hymns,  by  the  initial  word  or  words  ;  thus  they 
called  the  first  of  these  five  books,  "  Bereshith," 
"In  the  Beginning;"  the  second  one  ''Veelleh 
Shemoth,"  "  Now  these  are  the  names  ; "  the 
third  one  "  Va-yikra,"  "And  he  called,"  and  so  on. 
The  titles  in  our  English  Bible  are  much  more 
significant  and  appropriate  than  these  original 
Hebrew  titles  ;  thus  Genesis  signifies  origin,  and 
Genesis  is  the  Book  of  Origins  ;  Exodus  means 
departure,  and  the  book  describes  the  departure 
of  Israel  from  Egypt ;  Leviticus  points  out  the 
fact  that  the  book  is  mainly  occupied  with  the 
Levitical  legislation  ;  Numbers  gives  a  history  of 
the  numbering  of  the  people,  and  Deuteronomy, 
which  means  the  second  law,  contains  what  seems 
to  be  a  recapitulation  and  reenactment  of  the 
legislation  of  the  preceding  books.  But  these 
English  titles,  which  are  partly  translated  and 
partly  transferred  to  English  from  older  Latin  and 
Greek  titles,  tell  us  nothing  trustworthy  about 
the  authorship  of  the  books. 


20  WHO    WROTE    THE  BIBLE? 

How,  then,  you  desire  to  know,  did  these  books 
come  to  be  known  as  the  books  of  Moses  ? 

**  They  were  quoted,"  answer  some,  "  and  thus 
accredited  by  our  Lord  and  his  apostles.  They 
are  frequently  mentioned  in  the  New  Testament 
as  inspired  and  authoritative  books  ;  they  are  re- 
ferred to  as  the  writings  of  Moses  ;  we  have  the 
testimony  of  Jesus  Christ  and  of  his  apostles  to 
their  genuineness  and  authenticity."  Let  us  see 
how  much  truth  this  answer  contains.  It  con- 
fronts us  with  a  very  important  matter  which 
may  as  well  be  settled  before  we  go  on. 

It  is  true,  to  begin  with,  that  Jesus  and  the 
Evangelists  do  quote  from  these  books,  and  that 
they  ascribe  to  Moses  some  of  the  passages  which 
they  quote.  The  soundest  criticism  cannot  im- 
pugn the  honesty  or  the  intelligence  of  such  quo- 
tations. There  is  good  reason,  as  we  shall  see, 
for  believing  that  a  large  part  of  this  literature 
was  written  in  the  time  of  Moses,  and  under  the 
eye  of  Moses,  if  not  by  his  hand.  In  a  certain 
important  sense,  which  will  be  clearer  to  uS  as 
we  go  on,  this  literature  is  all  Mosaic.  The  ref- 
erence to  it  by  the  Lord  and  his  apostles  is  there- 
fore legitimate. 

But  this  reference  does  by  no  means  warrant 
the  sweeping  conclusion  that  the  five  books  of 
the  law  were  all  and  entire  from  the  pen  of  the 
Lawgiver.  Our  Lord  nowhere  says  that  the  first 
five  books  of  the  Old  Testament  were  all  written 
by  Moses.    Much  less  does  he  teach  that  the  con- 


WHAT  DID  MOSES    WRITE?  21 

tents  of  these  books  are  all  equally  inspired  and 
authoritative.  Indeed  he  quotes  from  them  sev- 
eral times  for  the  express  purpose  of  repudiating 
their  doctrines  and  repealing  their  legislation.  In 
the  very  fore-front  of  his  teaching  stands  a  stern 
array  of  judgments  in  which  undoubted  command- 
ments of  the  Mosaic  law  are  expressly  condemned 
and  set  aside,  some  of  them  because  they  are 
inadequate  and  superficial,  some  of  them  be- 
cause they  are  morally  defective.  "  Ye  have 
heard  that  it  was  said  to  them  of  old  time  "  thus 
and  thus  ;  "  but  I  say  unto  you  "  —  and  then  fol- 
low words  that  directly  contradict  the  old  legis- 
lation. After  quoting  two  of  the  commandments 
of  the  Decalogue  and  giving  them  an  interpreta- 
tion that  wholly  transforms  them,  he  proceeds  to 
cite  several  old  laws  from  these  Mosaic  books,  in 
order  to  set  his  own  word  firmly  against  them. 
One  of  these  also  is  a  law  of  the  Decalogue  itself. 
There  can  be  little  doubt  that  the  third  com- 
mandment is  quoted  and  criticised  by  our  Lord, 
in  this  discourse.  That  commandment  forbids, 
not  chiefly  profanity,  but  perjury  ;  by  implication 
it  permits  judicial  oaths.  And  Jesus  expressly 
forbids  judicial  oaths.  **  Swear  not  at  all."  I  am 
aware  that  this  is  not  the  usual  interpretation  of 
these  words,  but  I  believe  that  it  is  the  only  mean- 
ing that  the  words  will  bear.  Not  to  insist  upon 
this,  however,  several  other  examples  are  given 
in  the  discourse  concerning  which  there  can  be 
no  question. 


22  IV//0    WROTE    THE   BIBLE? 

Jesus  quotes  the  law  of  divorce  from  Deuter- 
onomy xxiv.  I,  2.  "When  a  man  taketh  a  wife 
and  marrieth  her,  then  it  shall  be,  if  she  find  no 
favor  in  his  eyes,  because  he  hath  found  some  un- 
seemly thing  in  her,  that  he  shall  give  her  a  bill 
of  divorcement  and  send  her  out  of  his  house. 
And  when  she  is  departed  out  of  his  house  she 
may  go  and  be  another  man's  wife."  These  are 
the  words  of  a  law  which  Moses  is  represented  as 
uttering  by  the  authority  of  Jehovah.  This  law, 
as  thus  expressed,  Jesus  Christ  unqualifiedly  re- 
peals. *'  I  say  unto  you  that  every  one  that  put- 
teth  away  his  wife,  saving  for  the  cause  of  forni- 
cation, maketh  her  an  adulteress,  and  whosoever 
shall  marry  her  when  she  is  put  away  committeth 
adultery." 

The  law  of  revenge  is  treated  in  the  same  way. 
"  Ye  have  heard  that  it  was  said.  An  eye  for  an 
eye  and  a  tooth  for  a  tooth."  Who  said  this  } 
Was  it  some  rabbin  of  the  olden  time  }  It  was 
Moses ;  nay,  the  old  record  says  that  this  is  the 
word  of  the  Lord  by  Moses :  "  The  Lord  spake 
unto  Moses,  saying  [among  other  things],  If  a 
man  cause  a  blemish  in  his  neighbor,  as  he  hath 
done  so  shall  it  be  done  to  him  ;  breach  for  breach, 
eye  for  eye,  tooth  for  tooth  ;  as  he  hath  caused  a 
blemish  in  a  man,  so  shall  it  be  rendered  unto 
him."  (Lev.  xxiv.  19,  20.)  So  in  Exodus  xxi.  24, 
"Thou  shalt  give  life  for  life,  eye  for  eye,  tooth 
for  tooth,  hand  for  hand,  burning  for  burning, 
wound  for  wound,  stripe  for  stripe."     It  is  some- 


WHAT  DID   MOSES    WRITE?  2$ 

times  said  that  these  retaliations  were  simply  per- 
mitted under  the  Mosaic  law,  but  this  is  a  great 
error ;  they  were  enjoined  :  "  Thine  eye  shall  not 
pity,"  it  is  said  in  another  place  (Deut.  xix.  21)  ; 
"  life  shall  go  for  life,  eye  for  eye,  tooth  for  tooth, 
hand  for  hand,  foot  for  foot."  This  law  of  retalia- 
tion is  an  integral  part  of  the  moral  legislation  of 
the  Pentateuch.  It  is  no  part  of  the  ceremonial 
law  ;  it  is  an  ethical  rule.  It  is  clearly  ascribed 
to  Moses  ;  it  is  distinctly  said  to  have  been  en- 
acted by  command  of  God.  But  Christ  in  the 
most  unhesitating  manner  condemns  and  counter- 
mands it. 

**  Ye  have  heard,"  he  continues,  ''that  it  was 
said,  Thou  shalt  love  thy  neighbor  and  hate  thine 
enemy ;  but  I  say  unto  you,  Love  your  enemies, 
and  pray  for  them  that  persecute  you."  "  But 
this,"  it  is  objected,  *'  is  not  a  quotation  from  the 
Old  Testament.  These  words  do  not  occur  in 
that  old  legislation."  At  any  rate  Jesus  intro- 
duces them  with  the  very  same  formula  which  he 
has  all  along  been  applying  to  the  words  which 
he  has  quoted  from  the  Mosaic  law.  It  is  evi- 
dent that  he  means  to  give  the  impression  that 
they  are  part  of  that  law.  He  is  not  careful  in 
any  of  these  cases  to  quote  the  exact  words  of 
the  law,  but  he  does  give  the  meaning  of  it.  He 
gives  the  exact  meaning  of  it  here.  The  Mosaic 
law  commanded  Jews  to  love  their  neighbors, 
members  of  their  own  tribe,  but  to  hate  the  peo- 
ple of  surrounding  tribes  :  "  An  Ammonite  or  a 


24  ^VIIO    WROTE    THE  BIBLE? 

Moabite  shall  not  enter  into  the  assemblv  of  the 
Lord  ;  even  to  the  tenth  generation  shall  none 
belonging  to  them  enter  into  the  assembly  of  the 
Lord  for  ever.  .  .  .  Thou  shalt  not  seek  their 
peace  nor  their  prosperity  all  thy  days  for  ever." 
(Deut.  xxiii.  3-6.) 

"  When  the  Lord  thy  God  shall  bring  thee  into 
the  land  whither  thou  goest  to  possess  it,  and 
shalt  cast  out  many  nations  before  thee,  .  .  . 
then  thou  shalt  utterly  destroy  them  ;  thou  shalt 
make  no  covenant  with  them,  nor  show  mercy 
unto  them."  (Deut.  vii.  i,  2.)  This  is  the  spirit 
of  much  of  this  ancient  legislation  ;  and  these 
laws  were,  if  the  record  is  true,  literally  executed, 
in  after  times,  by  Joshua  and  Samuel,  upon  the 
people  of  Canaan.  And  these  bloody  commands, 
albeit  they  have  a  "Thus  said  the  Lord"  behind 
every  one  of  them,  Jesus,  in  the  great  discourse 
which  is  the  charter  of  his  kingdom,  distinctly 
repeals. 

Such  is  the  method  by  which  our  Lord  some- 
times deals  with  the  Old  Testament.  It  is  by  no 
means  true  that  he  assumes  this  attitude  toward 
all  parts  of  it.  Sometimes  he  quotes  Lawgiver 
and  Prophets  in  confirmation  of  his  own  words  ; 
often  he  refers  to  these  ancient  Scriptures  as 
preparing  the  way  for  his  kingdom  and  foreshad- 
owing his  person  and  his  work.  Nay,  he  even 
says  of  that  law  which  we  are  now  studying  that 
not  one  jot  or  tittle  shall  in  any  wise  pass  from  it 
till  all  things  be  accomplished.     What  he  means 


WHAT  DID   MOSES    WRITER  2$ 

by  that  we  shall  be  able  by  and  by  to  discover. 
But  these  passages  which  I  have  cited  make  it 
clear  that  Jesus  Christ  cannot  be  appealed  to  in 
support  of  the  traditional  view  of  the  nature  of 
these  old  writings. 

The  common  argument  by  which  Christ  is 
made  a  witness  to  the  authenticity  and  infallible 
authority  of  the  Old  Testament  runs  as  follows : 

Christ  quotes  Moses  as  the  author  of  this  leg- 
islation ;  therefore  Moses  must  have  written  the 
whole  Pentateuch. 

Moses  was  an  inspired  prophet ;  therefore  all 
the  teaching  of  the  Pentateuch  must  be  infallible. 

The  facts  are,  that  Jesus  nowhere  testifies  that 
Moses  wrote  the  whole  of  the  Pentateuch  ;  and 
that  he  nowhere  guarantees  the  infallibility  either 
of  Moses  or  of  the  book.  On  the  contrary,  he 
sets  aside  as  inadequate  or  morally  defective  cer- 
tain laws  which  in  this  book  are  ascribed  to 
Moses. 

It  is  needful,  thus,  on  the  threshold  of  our  ar- 
gument, to  have  a  clear  understanding  respecting 
the  nature  of  the  testimony  borne  by  our  Lord 
and  his  apostles  to  this  ancient  literature.  It  is 
upon  this  that  the  advocates  of  the  traditional 
view  of  the  Old  Testament  wholly  rely,  "  Christ 
was  authority,"  they  say  ;  "  the  New  Testament 
writers  were  inspired  ;  you  all  admit  this  ;  now 
Christ  and  the  New  Testament  writers  con- 
stantly quote  the  Scriptures  of  the  Old  Testa- 
ment as  inspired  and  as  authoritative.     Therefore 


26  WV/6>    WROTE    THE  BIBLE  f 

they  must  be  the  infallible  word  of  God."  To 
this  it  is  sufficient  to  reply,  Christ  and  the  apos- 
tles do  quote  the  Old  Testament  Scriptures  ;  they 
find  a  great  treasure  of  inspired  and  inspiring 
truth  in  them,  and  so  can  we ;  they  recognize  the 
fact  that  they  are  organically  related  to  that  king- 
dom which  Christ  came  to  found,  and  that  they 
record  the  earlier  stages  of  that  great  course  of 
revelation  which  culminates  in  Christ ;  but  they 
nowhere  pronounce  any  of  these  writings  free 
from  error ;  there  is  not  a  hint  or  suggestion 
anywhere  in  the  New  Testament  that  any  of  the 
writings  of  the  Old  Testament  are  infallible  ;  and 
Christ  himself,  as  we  have  seen,  clearly  warns  his 
disciples  that  they  do  not  even  furnish  a  safe  rule 
of  moral  conduct.  After  this,  the  attempt  to 
prove  the  inerrancy  of  the  Old  Testament  by 
summoning  as  witnesses  the  writers  of  the  New 
Testament  may  as  well  be  abandoned. 

But  did  not  Jesus  say,  "  Search  the  Scriptures, 
for  in  them  ye  think  ye  have  eternal  life,  and  they 
are  they  that  testify  of  me  .-* "  Well,  if  he  had 
said  that,  it  would  not  prove  that  the  Scriptures 
they  searched  were  errorless.  The  injunction 
would  have  all  the  force  to-day  that  it  ever  had. 
One  may  very  profitably  study  documents  which 
are  far  from  infallible.  This  was  not,  however, 
what  our  Lord  said.  If  you  will  look  into  your 
Revised  Version  you  will  see  that  his  words,  ad- 
dressed to  the  Jews,  are  not  a  command  but  an 
assertion  :  "Ye  search  the  Scriptures,  for  in  them 


WHAT  DID  MOSES    WRITE?  2/ 

ye  think  ye  have  eternal  life"  (John  v.  39);  if 
you  searched  them  carefully  you  would  find  some 
testimony  there  concerning  me.  It  is  not  an  in- 
junction to  search  the  Scriptures  ;  it  is  simply 
the  statement  of  the  fact  that  the  Jews  to  whom 
he  was  speaking  did  search  the  Scriptures,  and 
searched  them  as  many  people  in  our  own  time 
do,  to  very  little  purpose. 

But  does  not  Paul  say,  in  his  letter  to  Timothy, 
that  ''All  Scripture  is  given  by  inspiration  of 
God  }  "  No,  Paul  does  not  say  that.  Look  again 
at  your  Revised  Version  (2  Tim.  iii.  16).:  "Every 
Scripture  inspired  of  God  is  also  profitable  for 
teaching,  for  reproof,  for  correction,  for  instruc- 
tion, which  is  in  righteousness."  Every  writing 
inspired  of  God  is  profitable  reading.  That  is  the 
whole  statement. 

But  Paul  says  in  the  verses  preceding,  that 
Timothy  had  known  from  a  child  the  Sacred 
Writings  which  were  able  to  make  him  wise  unto 
salvation  through  faith  in  Jesus  Christ.  Was 
there  not,  then,  in  his  hands,  a  volume  or  collec- 
tion of  books,  known  as  the  Sacred  Writings, 
with  a  definite  table  of  contents  ;  and  did  not  Paul 
refer  to  this  collection,  and  imply  that  all  these 
writings  were  inspired  of  God  and  profitable  for 
the  uses  specified } 

No,  this  is  not  the  precise  state  of  the  case. 
These  Sacred  Writings  had  not  at  this  time  been 
gathered  into  a  volume  by  themselves,  with  a 
fixed  table  of  contents.    What  is  called  the  Canon 


28  IVHO    WROTE    THE  BIBLE? 

of  the  Old  Testament  had  not  yet  been  finally 
determined.^  There  were,  indeed,  as  we  saw  in 
the  last  chapter,  two  collections  of  sacred  writ- 
ings, one  in  Hebrew  and  the  other  in  Greek. 
The  Hebrew  collection  was  not  at  this  time  defi- 
nitely closed  ;  there  was  still  a  dispute  among  the 
Palestinian  Jews  as  to  whether  two  or  three  of 
the  books  which  it  now  contains  should  go  into 
it ;  that  dispute  was  not  concluded  until  half  a 
century  after  the  death  of  our  Lord.  The  other 
collection,  as  I  have  said,  was  in  the  Greek  lan- 
guage, an^  it  included,  not  only  our  Old  Testa- 
ment books,  but  the  books  now  known  as  the  Old 
Testament  Apocrypha.  This  was  the  collection, 
remember,  most  used  by  our  Lord  and  his  apos- 
tles. Which  of  these  collections  was  in  the 
hands  of  Timothy  we  do  not  certainly  know.  But 
the  father  of  Timothy  was  a  Greek,  though  his 
mother  was  a  Jewess  ;  and  it  is  altogether  prob- 
able that  he  had  studied  from  his  childhood  the 
Greek  version  of  the  Old  Testament  writings. 
Shall  we  understand  Paul,  then,  as  certifying  the 
authenticity  and  infallibility  of  this  whole  collec- 
tion }  Does  he  mean  to  say  that  the  "  Story  of 
Susanna"  and  "Bel  and  the  Dragon,"  and  all 
the  rest  of  these  fables  and  tales,  are  profitable 
for  teaching  and  instruction  in  righteousness.? 
This  text,  so  interpreted,  evidently  proves  too 
much.  Doubtless  Paul  did  mean  to  commend  to 
Timothy  the  Old  Testament  Scriptures  as  con- 
1  See  chapter  xi. 


WHAT  DID  MOSES   WRITE?  29 

taining  precious  and  saving  truth.  But  we  must 
not  force  his  language  into  any  wholesale  in- 
dorsement of  every  letter  and  word,  or  even  of 
every  chapter  and  book  of  these  old  writings. 

So  far,  therefore,  as  our  Lord  himself  and  his 
apostles  are  concerned,  we  have  no  decisive  judg- 
ment either  as  to  the  authorship  of  these  old 
writings  or  as  to  their  absolute  freedom  from  er- 
ror. They  handled  these  Scriptures,  quoted  from 
them,  found  inspired  teaching  in  them  ;  but  the 
Scriptures  which  they  chiefly  handled,  from  which 
they  generally  quoted,  in  which  they  found  their 
inspired  teaching,  contained,  as  we  know,  worth- 
less matter.  It  is  not  to  be  assumed  that  they 
did  not  know  this  matter  to  be  worthless  ;  and  if 
they  knew  this,  it  is  not  to  be  asserted  that  they 
intended  to  place  upon  the  whole  of  it  the  stamp 
of  their  approval. 

We  have  wandered  somewhat  from  the  path  of 
our  discussion,  but  it  was  necessary  in  order  to 
determine  the  significance  of  those  references  to 
the  Old  Testament  with  which  the  New  Testa- 
ment abounds.  The  question  before  us  is,  Why 
do  we  believe  that  Moses  wrote  the  five  books 
which  bear  his  name  in  our  Bibles  .''  We  have 
seen  that  the  New  Testament  writers  give  us  no 
decisive  testimony  on  this  point.  On  what  testi- 
mony is  the  belief  founded  } 

Doubtless  it  rests  wholly  on  the  traditions  of 
the  Jews.  Such  was  the  tradition  preserved 
among  them  in  the  time  of  our  Lord.     They  be- 


30  WHO    WROTE    THE  BIBLE? 

lieved  that  Moses  wrote  every  word  of  these 
books  ;  that  God  dictated  the  syllables  to  him 
and  that  he  recorded  them.  But  the  traditions 
of  the  Jews  are  not,  in  other  matters,  highly  re- 
garded by  Christians.  Our  Lord  himself  speaks 
more  than  once  in  stern  censure  of  these  tradi- 
tions by  which,  as  he  charges,  their  moral  sense 
was  blunted  and  the  law  of  God  was  made  of 
none  effect.  Many  of  these  old  tales  of  theirs 
were  extremely  childish.  One  tradition  ascribes, 
as  we  have  seen,  to  Moses  the  authorship  of  the 
whole  Pentateuch  ;  another  declares  that  when, 
during  an  invasion  of  the  Chaldeans,  all  the  books 
of  the  Scripture  were  destroyed  by  fire,  Ezra 
wrote  them  all  out  from  memory,  in  an  incred- 
ibly short  space  of  time  ;  another  tradition  relates 
how  the  same  Ezra  one  day  heard  a  divine  voice 
bidding  him  retire  into  the  field  with  five  swift 
amanuenses,  —  "  how  he  then  received  a  full  cup, 
full  as  it  were  of  water,  but  the  color  of  it  was 
like  fire,  .  .  .  and  when  he  had  drank  of  it,  his 
heart  uttered  understanding  and  wisdom  grew  in 
his  breast,  for  his  spirit  strengthened  his  mem- 
ory, .  .  .  and  his  mouth  was  opened  and  shut  no 
more  and  for  forty  days  and  nights  he  dictated 
without  stopping  till  two  hundred  and  four  books 
were  written  down."  ^  These  fables  had  wide 
currency  among  the  Jews  ;  they  were  believed  by 
Irena:us,  TertuUian,  Augustine,  and  others  of  the 
great  fathers  of  the  Christian  Church ;  but  they 

1  2  Esdras  xiv.     See,  also,  Stanley's  Jewish  Church,  iii.  151. 


WHAT  DID  MOSES   WRITE?  3 1 

are  not  credited  in  these  days.  It  is  evident  that 
Jewish  tradition  is  not  always  to  be  trusted.  We 
shall  need  some  better  reason  than  this  for  be- 
lieving that  Moses  was  the  author  of  the  Penta- 
teuch. 

I  do  not  know  where  else  we  can  go  for  infor- 
mation except  to  the  books  themselves.  A  care- 
ful examination  of  them  may  throw  some  light 
upon  the  question  of  their  origin.  A  great  mul- 
titude of  scholars  have  been  before  us  in  their 
examination  ;  what  is  their  verdict } 

First  we  have  the  verdict  of  the  traditionalists, 
—  those,  I  mean,  who  accept  the  Jewish  tradi- 
tion, and  believe  with  the  rabbins  that  Moses 
wrote  the  whole  of  the  first  five  books  of  the 
Bible.  Some  who  hold  this  theory  are  ready  to 
admit  that  there  may  be  a  few  verses  here  and 
there  interpolated  into  the  record  by  later 
scribes  ;  but  they  maintain  that  the  books  in 
their  substance  and  entirety  came  in  their  pres- 
ent form  from  the  hands  of  Moses.  This  is  the 
theory  which  has  been  generally  received  by  the 
Christian  church.  It  is  held  to-day  by  very  few 
eminent  Christian  scholars. 

Over  against  this  traditional  theory  is  the  the- 
ory of  the  radical  and  destructive  critics  that 
Moses  wrote  nothing  at  all ;  that  perhaps  the  ten 
commandments  were  given  by  him,  but  hardly 
anything  more  ;  that  these  books  were  not  even 
written  in  the  time  of  Moses,  but  hundreds  of 
years  after  his  death.     Moses  is  supposed  to  have 


32  IVHO    WROTE    THE   BIBLE? 

lived  about  1400  b.  c.  ;  these  writings,  say  the 
destructive  critics,  were  first  produced  in  part 
about  730  B.  c,  but  were  mainly  written  after 
the  Exile  (about  444  b.  c),  almost  a  thousand 
years  after  the  death  of  Moses.  "  Strict  and  im- 
partial investigation  has  shown,"  says  Dr.  Knap- 
pert,  **  that  .  .  .  nothing  in  the  whole  Law  really 
comes  from  Moses  himself  except  the  ten  com- 
mandments. And  even  these  were  not  delivered 
by  him  in  the  same  form  as  we  find  them  now."  ^ 
This  is,  to  my  mind,  an  astounding  statement. 
It  illustrates  the  lengths  to  which  destructive 
criticism  can  go.  And  I  dare  say  that  we  shall 
find  in  our  study  of  these  books  reason  for  believ- 
ing that  such  views  as  these  are  as  far  astray  on 
the  one  side  as  those  of  the  traditionalists  are  on 
the  other. 

Let  us  test  these  two  theories  by  interrogating 
the  books  themselves. 

First,  then,  we  find  upon  the  face  of  the  record 
several  reasons  for  believing  that  the  books  can- 
not have  come,  in  their  present  form,  from  the 
hand  of  Moses. 

Moses  died  in  the  wilderness,  before  the  Israel- 
ites reached  the  Promised  Land,  before  the  Ca- 
naanites  were  driven  out,  and  the  land  was  divided 
among  the  tribes. 

It  is  not  likely  that  he  wrote  the  account  of  his 
own  death  and  burial  which  we  find  in  the  last 
chapter  of  Deuteronomy.     There  are  those,  it  is 

1   The  KcUgioii  of  Israel,  p.  9. 


WHAT  DID  MOSES   WRITE?  33 

true,  who  assert  that  Moses  was  inspired  to  write 
this  account  of  his  own  funeral  ;  but  this  is  going 
a  little  farther  than  the  rabbins  ;  they  declare 
that  this  chapter  was  added  by  Joshua.  It  is 
conceivable  that  Moses  might  have  left  on  record 
a  prediction  that  he  would  die  and  be  buried  in 
this  way ;  but  the  Spirit  of  the  Lord  could  never 
inspire  a  man  to  put  in  the  past  tense  a  plain 
narrative  of  an  event  which  is  yet  in  the  future. 
The  statement  when  written  would  be  false,  and 
God  is  not  the  author  of  falsehood. 

It  is  not  likely  cither  that  Moses  wrote  the 
words  in  Exodus  xi.  3  :  "  Moreover  the  man 
Moses  was  very  great  in  the  land  of  Egypt,  in 
the  sight  of  all  the  people  ;  "  nor  those  in  Num- 
bers xii.  3  :  "  Now  the  man  Moses  was  very  meek 
above  all  the  men  which  were  on  the  face  of  the 
earth."  It  has  been  said,  indeed,  that  Moses 
was  directed  by  inspiration  to  say  such  things 
about  himself ;  but  I  do  not  believe  that  egotism 
is  a  supernatural  product ;  men  take  that  in  the 
natural  way. 

Other  passages  show  upon  the  face  of  them 
that  they  must  have  been  added  to  these  books 
after  the  time  of  Moses.  It  is  stated  in  Exodus 
xvi.  35,  that  the  Israelites  continued  to  eat  manna 
until  they  came  to  the  borders  of  the  land  of  Ca- 
naan. But  Moses  was  not  living  when  they  en- 
tered that  land. 

In  Genesis  xii.  6,  in  connection  with  the  story 
of  Abraham's  entrance  into  Palestine,  the  histor- 


34  ^//^    WROTE    THE  BIBLE? 

ical  explanation  is  thrown  in  :  **  And  the  Canaan- 
ite  was  then  in  the  land."  It  would  seem  that 
this  must  have  been  written  at  a  day  when  the 
Canaanite  was  no  longer  in  the  land,  —  after  the 
occupation  of  the  land  and  the  expulsion  of  the 
Canaanites.  In  Numbers  xv.  32,  an  incident  is 
related  which  is  prefaced  by  the  words,  *'  While 
the  children  of  Israel  were  in  the  wilderness." 
Does  not  this  look  back  to  a  past  time  ?  Can  we 
imagine  that  this  was  written  by  Moses  ?  Again, 
in  Deuteronomy  iii.  11,  we  have  a  description  of 
the  bedstead  of  Og,  one  of  the  giants  captured 
and  killed  by  the  Israelites,  just  before  the  death 
of  Moses  ;  and  this  bedstead  is  referred  to  as  if 
it  were  an  antique  curiosity  ;  the  village  is  men- 
tioned in  which  it  is  kept.  In  Genesis  xxxvi.  we 
find  a  genealogy  of  the  kings  of  Moab,  running 
through  several  generations,  prefaced  with  the 
words  :  "These  are  the  kings  that  reigned  in  the 
land  of  Edom  before  there  reigned  any  king  over 
the  children  of  Israel."  This  is  looking  back- 
ward from  a  day  when  kings  were  reigning  over 
the  children  of  Israel.  How  could  it  have  been 
written  five  hundred  years  before  there  ever  was 
a  king  in  Israel  .<*  In  Genesis  xiv.  14,  we  read  of 
the  city  of  Dan  ;  but  in  Judges  xviii.  29,  we  are 
told  that  this  city  did  not  receive  its  name  until 
hundreds  of  years  later,  long  after  the  time  of 
Moses.  Similarly  the  account  of  the  naming  of 
the  villages  of  Jair,  which  we  find  in  Deuteronomy 
iii.  14,  is  quite  inconsistent  with  another  account 


WHAT  DID   MOSES   WRITE?  35 

in  Judges  x.  3,  4,  One  of  them  must  be  errone- 
ous, and  it  is  probable  that  the  passage  in  Deu- 
teronomy is  an  anachronism. 

Most  of  these  passages  could  be  explained  by 
the  admission  that  the  scribes  in  later  years 
added  sentences  here  and  there  by  way  of  inter- 
pretation. But  that  admission  would  of  course 
discredit  the  infallibility  of  the  books.  Other 
difficulties,  however,  of  a  much  more  serious 
kind,  present  themselves. 

In  the  first  verse  of  the  twentieth  chapter  of 
Numbers  we  read  that  the  people  came  to  Kadesh 
in  the  first  month.  The  first  month  of  what 
year  }  We  look  back,  and  the  first  note  of  time 
previous  to  this  is  the  second  month  of  the  sec- 
ond year  of  the  wandering  in  the  wilderness. 
Their  arrival  at  Kadesh  described  in  the  twen- 
tieth chapter  would  seem,  then,  to  have  been  in 
the  first  month  of  the  third  year.  In  the  twenty- 
second  verse  of  this  chapter  the  camp  moves  on 
to  Mount  Hor,  and  Aaron  dies  there.  There  is 
no  note  of  any  interval  of  time  whatever;  yet  we 
are  told  in  the  thirty-third  chapter  of  this  book 
that  Aaron  died  in  the  fortieth  year  of  the  wan- 
dering. Here  is  a  skip  of  thirty-eight  years  in 
the  history,  without  an  indication  of  anything 
having  happened  meantime.  On  the  supposition 
that  this  is  a  continuous  history  written  by  the 
man  who  was  a  chief  actor  in  it,  such  a  gap  is 
inexplicable.  There  is  a  reasonable  way  of  ac- 
counting for  it,  as  we  shall  see,  but  it  cannot  be 


36  WHO    WROTE    THE  BIBLE? 

accounted  for  on  the  theory  that  the  book  in  its 
present  form  came  from  the  hand  of  Moses. 

Some  of  the  laws  also  bear  internal  evidence 
of  having  originated  at  a  later  day  than  that  of 
Moses.  The  law  forbidding  the  removal  of  land- 
marks presupposes  a  long  occupation  of  the  land  ; 
and  the  law  regulating  military  enlistments  is 
more  naturally  explained  on  the  theory  that  it 
was  framed  in  the  settled  period  of  the  Hebrew 
history,  and  not  during  the  wanderings.  This 
may,  indeed,  have  been  anticipatory  legislation, 
but  the  explanation  is  not  probable. 

Various  repetitions  of  laws  occur  which  are  in- 
explicable on  the  supposition  that  these  laws  were 
all  written  by  the  hand  of  one  person.  Thus  in 
Exodus  xxxiv.  17-26,  there  is  a  collection  of  lecral 
enactments,  all  of  which  can  be  found,  in  the 
same  order  and  almost  the  same  words,  in  the 
twenty-third  chapter  of  the  same  book.  Thus, 
to  quote  the  summary  of  Bleck,  we  find  in  both 
places,  {a)  that  all  the  males  shall  appear  before 
Jehovah  three  times  in  every  year  ;  {b)  that  no 
leavened  bread  shall  be  used  at  the  killing  of  the 
Paschal  Lamb,  and  that  the  fat  sh?ll  be  preserved 
until  the  next  morning ;  {c)  that  the  first  of  the 
fruits  of  the  field  shall  be  brought  into  the  house 
of  the  Lord  ;  {d)  that  the  young  kid  shall  not  be 
seethed  in  its  mother's  milk.^ 

We  cannot  imagine  that  one  man,  with  a  fairly 
good  memory,   much   less  an   infallibly  inspired 

1  Introduction  to  the  Old  Testament^  i.  240. 


WHAT  DID  MOSES    WRITE?  37 

man,  should  have  written  these  laws  twice  over, 
in  the  same  words,  within  so  small  a  space,  in 
the  same  legal  document.  In  Leviticus  wc  have 
a  similar  instance.  If  any  one  will  take  that  book 
and  carefully  compare  the  eighteenth  with  the 
twentieth  chapter,  he  will  see  some  reason  for 
doubting  that  both  chapters  could  have  been  in- 
serted by  one  hand  in  this  collection  of  statutes. 
"It  is  not  probable,"  as  Bleek  has  said,  "that 
Moses  would  have  written  the  two  chapters  one 
after  the  other,  and  would  so  shortly  after  have 
repeated  the  same  precepts  which  he  had  before 
given,  only  not  so  well  arranged  the  second 
time."  1 

There  are  also  quite  a  number  of  inconsisten- 
cies and  contradictions  in  the  legislation,  all  of 
which  may  be  easily  explained,  but  not  on  the 
theory  that  the  laws  all  came  from  the  pen  of  one 
infallibly  inspired  lawgiver.  We  find  also  sev- 
eral historical  repetitions  and  historical  discrep- 
ancies, all  of  which  make  against  the  theory  that 
Moses  is  the  author  of  all  this  Pentateuchal  litera- 
ture. A  single  author,  if  he  were  a  man  of  fair 
intelligence,  good  common  sense,  and  reasonably 
firm  memory,  could  not  have  written  it.  And 
unless  tautology,  anachronisms,  and  contradic- 
tions are  a  proof  of  inspiration,  much  less  could 
it  have  been  written  by  a  single  inspired  writer. 
The  traditional  theory  cannot  therefore  be  true. 
We  have  appealed  to  the  books  themselves,  and 
they  bear  swift  witness  against  it. 

1  Introdiiction  to  the  Old  Testamoity  i.  240. 


38  ivno  WROTE  THE  bible? 

Now  let  us  look  at  the  other  theory  of  the  de- 
structive critics  which  not  only  denies  that  Moses 
wrote  any  portion  of  the  Pentateuch,  but  alleges 
that  it  was  written  in  Palestine,  none  of  it  less 
than  six  or  seven  hundred  years  after  he  was 
dead  and  buried. 

In  the  first  place  the  book  expressly  declares 
that  Moses  wrote  certain  portions  of  it.  He  is 
mentioned  several  times  as  having  written  cer- 
tain historical  records  and  certain  words  of  the 
law.  In  Exodus  xxiv.,  we  are  told  that  Moses 
not  only  rehearsed  to  the  people  the  Covenant 
which  the  Lord  had  made  with  them,  but  that  he 
wrote  all  the  words  of  the  Covenant  in  a  book, 
and  that  he  took  the  book  of  the  Covenant  and 
read  it  in  the  audience  of  all  the  people.  After 
the  idolatry  of  the  people  Moses  was  again  com- 
manded to  write  these  words,  **  and  "  it  is  added, 
"he  wrote  upon  the  tables  the  words  of  the  Cove- 
nant, the  ten  commandments."  In  Exodus  xvii. 
14,  we  are  told  that  Moses  wrote  the  narrative  of 
the  defeat  of  Amalek  in  a  book  ;  and  again  in 
Numbers  xxxiii.  21,  we  read  that  Moses  recorded 
the  various  marches  and  halts  of  the  Israelites  in 
the  wilderness.  We  have  also  in  the  Book  of 
Deuteronomy  (xxxi.  24-26)  a  statement  that 
Moses  wrote  "  the  words  of  the  law  "  in  a  book, 
and  put  it  in  the  ark  of  the  covenant  for  preser- 
vation. Precisely  how  much  of  the  law  this  state- 
ment is  meant  to  cover  is  not  clear.  Some  have 
interpreted  it  to  cover  the  whole  Pentateuch,  but 


WHAT  DID  MOSES   WRITE?  39 

that  interpretation,  as  we  have  seen,  is  inadmis- 
sible. We  may  concede  that'  it  does  refer  to  a 
body  or  code  of  laws, — probably  that  body  or 
code  on  which  the  legislation  of  Deuteronomy  is 
based. 

These  are  all  the  statements  made  in  the  writ- 
ings themselves  concerning  their  origin.  They 
prove, -if  they  are  credible,  that  portions  of  these 
books  were  written  by  Moses  ;  they  do  not  prove 
that  the  whole  of  them  came  from  his  hand. 

I  see  no  reason  whatever  to  doubt  that  this  is 
the  essential  fact.  The  theory  of  the  destructive 
critics  that  this  literature  and  this  legislation  was 
all  produced  in  Palestine,  about  the  eighth  cen- 
tury before  Christ,  and  palmed  off  upon  the  Jews 
as  a  pious  fraud,  does  not  bear  investigation.  In 
large  portions  of  these  laws  we  are  constantly 
meeting  with  legal  provisions  and  historical  allu- 
sions that  take  us  directly  back  to  the  time  of 
the  wandering  in  the  wilderness,  and  cannot  be 
explained  on  any  other  theory.  "  When,"  says 
Bleek,  **  we  meet  with  laws  which  refer  in  their 
whole  tenor  to  a  state  of  things  utterly  unknown 
in  the  period  subsequent  to  Moses,  and  to  cir- 
cumstances existing  in  the  Mosaic  age,  and  in 
that  only,  it  is  in  the  highest  degree  likely  that 
these  laws  not  only  in  their  essential  purport 
proceeded  from  Moses,  but  also  that  they  were 
written  down  by  Moses  or  at  least  in  the  Mosaic 
age.  Of  these  laws  which  appear  to  carry  with 
them  such  clear  and  exact  traces  of  the  Mosaic 


40  WHO    WROTE    THE  BIBLE? 

age,  there  are  many  occurring,  especially  in  Le- 
viticus, and  also  in  Numbers  and  Exodus,  which 
laws  relate  to  situations  and  surrounding  circum- 
stances only  existing  whilst  the  people,  as  was 
the  case  in  Moses'  time,  wandered  in  the  wil- 
derness and  were  dwellers  in  the  close  confine- 
ment of  camps  and  tents."  ^  It  is  not  necessary 
to  draw  out  this  evidence  at  length  ;  I  will  only 
refer  to  a  few  out  of  scores  of  instances.  The 
first  seven  chapters  of  Leviticus,  containing  laws 
regulating  the  burnt  offerings  and  meat  offerings, 
constantly  assume  that  the  people  are  in  the 
camp  and  in  the  wilderness.  The  refuse  of  the 
beasts  offered  in  sacrifice  was  to  be  carried  out 
of  the  camp  to  the  public  ash  heap,  and  burned. 
The  law  of  the  Great  Day  of  Atonement  (Lev. 
xvi.)  is  also  full  of  allusions  to  the  fact  that  the 
people  were  in  camp  ;  the  scapegoat  was  to  be 
driven  into  the  wilderness,  and  the  man  who 
drove  it  out  was  to  wash  his  clothes  and  bathe, 
and  afterward  come  into  the  camp ;  the  bullock 
and  the  goat,  slain  for  the  sacrifice,  were  to  be 
carried  forth  without  the  camp  ;  he  who  bears 
them  forth  must  also  wash  himself  before  he  re- 
turns to  the  camp.  Large  parts  of  the  legisla- 
tion concerning  leprosy  are  full  of  the  same  inci- 
dental references  to  the  fact  that  the  people  were 
dwelling  in  camp. 

There  are  also  laws  requiring  that  all  the  ani- 
mals killed  for  food  should  be  slaughtered  before 

1   Vol.  i.  p.  212. 


WHAT  DID  MOSES   WRITE?  41 

the  door  of  the  Tabernacle.  There  was  a  reason 
for  this  law  ;  it  was  intended  to  guard  against  a 
debasing  superstition  ;  but  how  would  it  have 
been  possible  to  obey  it  when  the  people  were 
scattered  all  over  the  land  of  Palestine?  It  was 
adapted  only  to  the  time  when  they  were  dwell- 
ing in  a  camp  in  the  wilderness. 

Besides,  it  must  not  be  overlooked  that  in  all 
this  legislation  "the  priests  are  not  at  all  referred 
to  in  general,  but  by  name,  as  Aaron  and  his 
sons,  or  the  sons  of  Aaron  the  priests." 

All  the  legislation  respecting  the  construction 
of  the  tabernacle,  the  disposition  of  it  in  the 
camp,  the  transportation  of  it  from  place  to  place 
in  the  wilderness,  the  order  of  the  march,  the 
summoning  of  the  people  when  camp  was  to  be 
broken,  with  all  its  minute  and  circumstantial  di- 
rections, would  be  destitute  of  meaning  if  it  had 
been  written  while  the  people  were  living  in  Pal- 
estine, scattered  all  over  the  land,  dwelling  in 
their  own  houses,  and  engaged  in  agricultural 
pursuits. 

The  simple,  unforced,  natural  interpretation  of 
these  laws  takes  us  back,  I  say,  to  the  time  of 
Moses,  to  the  years  of  the  wandering  in  the  wil- 
derness. The  incidental  references  to  the  condi- 
tions of  the  wilderness  life  are  far  more  convin- 
cing than  any  explicit  statement  would  have  been. 
Can  any  one  conceive  that  a  writer  of  laws,  living 
in  Palestine  hundreds  of  years  afterwards,  could 
have  fabricated  these  allusions  to  the  camp  life 


42  IV no    WROTE    THE  BIBLE? 

and  the  tent  life  of  the  people  ?  Such  a  novel- 
ist did  not  exist  among  them  ;  and  I  question 
whether  Professor  Kuenen  and  Professor  Well- 
hausen,  with  all  their  wealth  of  imagination,  could 
have  done  any  such  thing.  Many  of  these  laws 
were  certainly  written  in  the  time  of  Moses ;  and 
I  do  not  believe  that  any  man  was  living  in  the 
time  of  Moses  who  was  more  competent  to  write 
such  laws  than  was  Moses  himself.  The  conclu- 
sion of  Bleek  seems  therefore  to  me  altogether 
reasonable :  "  Although  the  Pentateuch  in  its 
present  state  and  extent  may  not  have  been  com- 
posed by  Moses,  and  also  many  of  the  single  laws 
therein  may  be  the  product  of  a  later  age,  still 
the  legislation  contained  in  it  is  genuinely  Mo- 
saic in  its  entire  spirit  and  character."  ^  We 
are  brought,  therefore,  in  our  study,  to  these  in- 
evitable conclusions  : 

1.  The  Pentateuch  could  never  have  been  writ- 
ten by  any  one  man,  inspired  or  otherwise. 

2.  It  is  a  composite  work,  in  which  many  hands 
have  been  engaged.  The  production  of  it  ex- 
tends over  many  centuries. 

3.  It  contains  writings  which  are  as  old  as  the 
time  of  Moses,  and  some  that  are  much  older. 
It  is  impossible  to  tell  how  much  of  it  came  from 
the  hand  of  Moses,  but  there  are  considerable 
portions  of  it  which,  although  they  may  have 
been  somewhat  modified  by  later  editors,  are  sub- 
stantially as  he  left  them. 

1  Vol.  i.  p.  221. 


WHAT  DID   MOSES   WRITE?  43 

I  have  said  that  the  Pentateuch  is  a  composite 
work.  In  the  next  chapter  we  shall  find  some 
curious  facts  concerning  its  component  parts,  and 
the  way  in  which  they  have  been  put  together. 
And  although  it  did  not  come  into  being  in  the 
way  in  which  we  have  been  taught  by  the  tradi- 
tions of  the  rabbins,  yet  we  shall  see  that  it  con- 
tains some  wonderful  evidence  of  the  superin- 
tending care  of  God,  —  of  that  continuous  and 
growing  manifestation  of  his  truth  and  his  love 
to  the  people  of  Israel,  which  is  what  we  mean 
by  revelation. 

Revelation,  we  shall  be  able  to  understand,  is 
not  the  dictation  by  God  of  words  to  men  that 
they  may  be  written  down  in  books  ;  it  is  rather 
the  disclosure  of  the  truth  and  love  of  God  to 
men  in  the  processes  of  history,  in  the  develop- 
ment of  the  moral  order  of  the  world.  It  is  the 
Light  that  lighteth  every  man,  shining  in  the 
paths  that  lead  to  righteousness  and  life.  There 
is  a  moral  leadership  of  God  in  history ;  revela- 
tion is  the  record  of  that  leadership.  It  is  by  no 
means  confined  to  words ;  its  most  impressive 
disclosures  are  in  the  field  of  action.  **  Thus  did 
the  Lord,"  as  Dr.  Bruce  has  said,  is  a  more  per- 
fect formula  of  revelation  than  "  Thus  said  the 
Lord."  It  is  in  that  great  historical  movement 
of  which  the  Bible  is  the  record  that  we  find  the 
revelation  of  God  to  men. 


CHAPTER   III. 

SOURCES    OF    THE    PENTATEUCH. 

In  the  last  chapter  we  found  evidence  that  the 
Pentateuch  as  it  stands  could  not  have  been  the 
work  of  Moses,  though  it  contains  much  material 
which  must  have  originated  in  the  time  of  Moses, 
and  is  more  likely  to  have  been  dictated  by  him 
than  by  any  one  else ;  that  large  portions  of  the 
Mosaic  law  were  of  Mosaic  authorship  ;  that  the 
entire  system  of  Levitical  legislation  grew  up 
from  this  Mosaic  germ,  though  much  of  it  ap- 
peared in  later  generations ;  and  that,  therefore, 
the  habit  of  the  Jews  of  calling  it  all  the  law  of 
Moses  is  easily  understood.  We  thus  discovered 
in  this  study  that  the  Pentateuch  is  a  composite 
book. 

The  Christian  Church  in  all  the  ages  has  been 
inclined  to  pin  its  faith  to  what  the  rabbins  said 
about  the  origin  of  this  book,  and  this  is  not  alto- 
gether surprising  ;  but  in  these  days  when  testi- 
mony is  sifted  by  criticism  we  find  that  the  tradi- 
tions of  the  rabbins  are  not  at  all  trustworthy ; 
and  when  we  go  to  the  Book  itself,  and  ask  it  to 
tell  us  what  it  can  of  the  secret  of  its  origin,  we 
find  that  it  has  a  very  different  story  to  tell  from 


SOURCES  OF  THE   PENTATEUCH.  45 

that  with  which  the  rabbins  have  beguiled  us. 
A  careful  study  of  the  l^ook  makes  it  perfectly 
certain  that  it  is  not  the  production  of  any  one 
man,  but  a  growth  that  has  been  going  on  for 
many  centuries  ;  that  it  embodies  the  work  of 
many  hands,  put  together  in  an  artless  way  by 
various  editors  and  compilers.  The  framework 
is  Mosaic,  but  the  details  of  the  work  were  added 
by  reverent  disciples  of  Moses,  the  last  of  whom 
must  have  lived  and  written  many  hundred  years 
after  Moses'  day. 

Some  of  the  evidences  of  composite  structure 
which  lie  upon  the  very  face  of  the  narrative  will 
now  come  under  our  notice.  It  is  plain  that  the 
whole  of  this  literature  could  not  have  been  writ- 
ten by  any  one  man  without  some  kind  of  assist- 
ance. All  the  books,  except  the  first,  are  indeed 
a  record  of  events  which  occurred  mainly  during 
the  lifetime  of  Moses,  and  of  most  of  which  he 
might  have  had  personal  knowledge.  But  the 
story  of  Genesis  goes  back  to  a  remote  antiquity. 
The  last  event  related  in  that  book  occurred  four 
hundred  years  before  Moses  was  born  ;  it  was  as 
distant  from  him  as  the  discovery  of  America  by 
Columbus  is  from  us  ;  and  other  portions  of  the 
narrative,  such  as  the  story  of  the  Flood  and  the 
Creation,  stretch  back  into  the  shadows  of  the 
age  which  precedes  history.  Neither  Moses  nor 
any  one  living  in  his  day  could  have  given  us 
these  reports  from  his  own  knowledge.  Whoever 
wrote  this  must  have  obtained  his  materials  in 
one  of  three  ways. 


46  WHO    WROTE    THE  BIBLE? 

1.  They  might  have  been  given  to  him  by  di- 
rect revelation  from  God. 

2.  He  might  have  gathered  them  up  from  oral 
tradition,  from  stories,  folk-lore,  transmitted  from 
mouth  to  mouth,  and  so  preserved  from  genera- 
tix)n  to  generation. 

3.  He  might  have  found  them  in  written  docu- 
ments existing  at  the  time  of  his  writing. 

The  first  of  these  conjectures  embodies  the 
rabbinical  theory.  The  later  form  of  that  the- 
ory declared,  however,  that  God  did  not  even  dic- 
tate while  Moses  wrote,  but  simply  handed  the 
law,  all  written  and  punctuated,  out  of  heaven  to 
Moses ;  the  only  question  with  these  rabbins 
was  whether  he  handed  it  down  all  at  once,  or 
one  volume  at  a  time.  It  is  certain  that  this  is 
not  the  correct  theory.  The  repetitions,  the  dis- 
crepancies, the  anachronisms,  and  the  errors 
which  the  writing  certainly  contains  prove  that  it 
could  not  have  been  dictated,  word  for  word,  by 
the  Omniscient  One.  Those  who  maintain  such 
a  theory  as  this  should  beware  how  they  ascribe 
to  God  the  imperfections  of  men.  It  seems  to 
me  that  the  advocacy  of  the  verbal  theory  of  in- 
spiration comes  perilously  near  to  the  sin  against 
the  Holy  Ghost. 

The  second  conjecture,  that  the  writer  of  these 
books  might  have  gathered  up  oral  traditions  of 
the  earlier  generations  and  incorporated  them 
into  his  writings,  is  more  plausible  ;  yet  a  careful 
examination  of  the  writings  themselves  does  not 


SOURCES  OF   THE   PEXTATEUCH.  47 

confirm  this  theory.     The  form  of  this  literature 
shows  that  it  must  have  had  another  origin. 

The  only  remaining  conjecture,  that  the  books 
are  compilations  of  written  documents,  has  been 
established  beyond  controversy  by  the  most  pa- 
tient study  of  the  writings  themselves.  In  the 
Book  of  Genesis  the  evidence  of  the  combination 
of  two  documents  is  so  obvious  that  he  who  runs 
may  read.  These  two  documents  are  distin- 
guished from  each  other,  partly  by  the  style  of 
writing,  and  partly  by  the  different  names  which 
they  apply  to  the  Supreme  Being.  One  of  these 
old  writers  called  the  Djity  Elohim,  the  other 
called  him  Yahveh,  or  Jehovah.  These  docu- 
ments are  known,  therefore,  as  the  Elohistic  and 
the  Jehovistic  narratives.  Sometimes  it  is  a  lit- 
tle difficult  to  tell  where  the  line  runs  which  sep- 
arates these  narratives,  but  usually  it  is  distinct. 
Readers  of  Genesis  find  many  passages  in  which 
the  name  given  to  the  Deity  is  '*  God,"  and  oth- 
ers in  which  it  is  ''  Lord,"  in  small  capitals.  The 
first  of  these  names  represents  the  Hebrew  Elo- 
him, the  second  the  Hebrew  Yahveh  or  Jehovah. 
In  one  important  section,  beginning  with  the 
fourth  verse  of  the  second  chapter,  and  continu- 
ing through  the  chapter,  the  two  names  are  com- 
bined, and  w€  have  the  Supreme  Being  spoken 
of  as  "The  Lord  God,"  Jehovah-Elohim.  It  is 
evident  to  every  observing  reader  that  we  have 
in  the  beginning  of  Genesis  two  distinct  accounts 
of  the  Creation,  the  one  occupying  the  first  chap- 


48  IV//0    WROTE    THE  BIBLE? 

tcr  and  three  verses  of  the  second,  the  other  oc- 
cupying the  remainder  of  the  second  chapter  with 
the  whole  of  the  third.  The  difference  between 
these  accounts  is  quite  marked.  The  style  of  the 
writing,  particularly  in  the  Hebrew,  is  strongly 
contrasted  ;  and  the  details  of  the  story  are  not 
entirely  harmonious.  In  the  first  narrative  the 
order  of  creation  is,  first  the  earth  and  its  vegeta- 
tion, then  the  lower  animals,  then  man,  male  and 
female,  made  in  God's  image.  In  the  second 
narrative  the  order  is,  first  the  earth  and  its  vege- 
tation, then  man,  then  the  lower  orders  of  ani- 
mals, then  woman.  In  the  first  story  plant  life 
springs  into  existence  at  the  direct  command  of 
God  ;  in  the  second  it  results  from  a  mist  which 
rose  from  the  ea.rth  and  watered  the  whole  face 
of  the  ground.  These  striking  differences  would 
be  hard  to  explain  if  we  had  not  before  our  faces 
the  clear  evidence  of  two  old  documents  joined 
together. 

I  spoke  in  the  last  chapter  of  certain  historical 
discrepancies  which  are  not  explicable  on  the  sup- 
position that  this  is  the  work  of  a  single  writer. 
Such  are  the  two  accounts  of  the  origin  of  the 
name  of  Beersheba,  the  one  in  the  twentv-first 
and  the  other  in  the  twenty-sixth  chapter  of  Gen- 
esis. The  first  account  says  that  i^:  was  named 
by  Abraham,  and  gives  the  reason  why  he  called 
the  place  by  this  name.  The  second  account 
says  that  it  recciv^ed  its  name  from  Isaac,  about 
ninety  years  later,  and  gives  a  wholly  different 


SOURCES  OF   THE   PENTATEUCH.  49 

explanation  of  the  reason  why  he  called  it  by  this 
name.  When  we  find  that  in  the  first  of  these 
stories  God  is  called  Elohim,^  and  in  the  second 
Jehovah,  we  can  readily  explain  this  discrepancy. 
The  compiler  took  one  of  these  narratives  from 
one  of  these  old  documents,  and  the  other  from 
the  other,  and  was  not  careful  to  reconcile  the 
two. 

A  similar  duplication  of  the  narrative  is  found 
in  chapters  xx.  and  xxvi.,  with  respect  to  the  inci- 
dent of  Abimelech  ;  in  the  first  of  these  narratives 
a  serious  complication  is  described  as  arising 
between  Abimelech  King  of  Gerar  on  the  one 
hand  and  Abraham  and  Sarah  on  the  other ;  in 
the  second  Abimelech  is  represented  as  interfer- 
ing, in  precisely  the  same  way  and  with  the  same 
results,  in  the  domestic  felicity  of  Isaac  and  Re- 
bekah.  The  harmonizers  have  done  their  work, 
of  course,  upon  these  two  passages  ;  they  have 
said  that  there  were  two  Abimelcchs,  and  that 
Isaac  repeated  the  blunder  of  his  father  ;  but  it 
is  a  little  singular,  if  this  were  so,  that  no  refer- 
ence is  made  in  the  latter  narrativ^e  to  the  former. 
It  is  altogether  probable  that  we  have  the  same 
story  ascribed  to  different  actors  ;  and  when  we 
find  that  the  one  narrative  is  Elohistic  and  the 
other  Jehovistic,  the  problem  is  solved. 

More  curious  than  any  other  of  these  combina- 
tions is  the  account  of   the  Flood,  in  which  the 

1  In  the  last  verse  of  this  narrative  the  word  Jehovah  is  used, 
but  this  is  probably  an  interpolation. 


50  IV7/0    WROTE    THE  BIBLE  f 

compiler  has  taken  the  narratives  of  these  two 
old  writers  and  pieced  them  together  like  patch- 
work. Refer  to  your  Bibles  and  note  this  piece 
of  literary  joiner-work.  At  the  fifth  verse  of  the 
sixth  chapter  of  Genesis  this  story  begins  ;  from 
this  verse  to  the  end  of  the  eighth  verse  the  Je- 
hovistic  document  is  used.  The  name  of  the 
Deity  is  Jehovah,  translated  Lord.  From  the 
ninth  verse  to  the  end  of  the  chapter  the  Elohis- 
tic  document  is  used.  The  word  applied  to  God 
is  Elohim,  translated  God.  With  the  seventh 
chapter  begins  again  the  quotation  from  the  other 
document,  "  And  the  Lord  [Jehovah]  said  unto 
Noah."  This  extends  only  to  the  sixth  verse  ; 
then  the  Elohistic  narrative  begins  again,  and 
continues  to  the  nineteenth  verse  of  the  eighth 
chapter,  including  it  ;  then  the  Jehovistic  nar- 
rative begins  again,  and  continues  through  the 
chapter  ;  then  the  Elohist  takes  up  the  tale  for 
the  first  seventeen  verses  of  the  ninth  chapter ; 
then  the  Jehovist  goes  on  to  the  twenty-seventh 
verse,  and  the  Elohist  closes  the  chapter.  It  is 
true  that  we  have  in  the  midst  of  some  of  these 
Elohistic  passages  a  verse  or  two  of  the  other  doc- 
ument inserted  by  the  compiler  ;  but  the  outlines 
of  the  different  documents  are  marked  as  I  have 
told  you.  If  you  take  this  story  and  dissect  out 
of  it  the  portions  which  I  have  ascribed  to  the 
Elohist  and  put  them  together,  you  will  have  a 
clear,  complete,  consecutive  story  of  the  Flood  ; 
the  portions  of  the  Jehovistic  narrative  inserted 


SOURCES  OF   THE   PEXTATEUCII.  5  I 

rather  tend  to  confusion.  "  The  consideration 
of  the  context  here,"  says  Bleck,  '*  quite  apart 
from  the  changes  in  the  naming  of  God,  shows 
that  the  Jehovistic  passages  of  the  narrative  did 
not  originally  belong  to  it.  It  cannot  fail  to  be 
observed  that  the  connection  is  often  interrupted 
by  the  Jehovistic  passages,  and  that  by  cutting 
them  out  a  more  valuable  and  clearer  continuity 
of  the  narrative  is  almost  always  obtained.  For 
instance,  in  the  existing  narrative  certain  repeti- 
tions keep  on  occurring  ;  one  of  these,  especially, 
is  connected  with  a  difference  in  the  matters  of 
fact  related,  introducing  no  slight  difficulty  and 
obscurity."  ^ 

Hear  the  Jehovist  :  "  And  Jehovah  saw  that 
the  wickedness  of  man  was  great  in  the  earth" 
(ch.  vi.  5).  Now  hear  the  Elohist  (v.  11)  :  **  And 
the  earth  was  corrupt  before  Elohim,  and  the 
earth  "was  filled  with  violence."  The  Jehovist 
says  (v.  7)  :  "  And  Jehovah  said,  I  will  destroy 
man  whom  I  have  created  from  the  face  of  the 
ground."  The  Elohist  says  (v.  13):  **The  earth 
is  filled  with  violence  through  them,  and  behold 
I  will  destroy  them  from  the  earth."  In  the  ninth 
verse  of  the  sixth  chapter  we  read  :  "  Noah  was 
a  righteous  man  and  perfect  in  his  generation  ; 
'  Noah  walked  with  Elohim."  In  the  first  verse 
of  the  seventh  chapter,  we  read,  ''And  Jehovah 
said  unto  Noah,  Come  thou  and  all  thy  house  into 
the  ark  ;  for  thee  have   I  seen  righteous  before 

1  Vol.  i.  p.  273. 


52  WHO    WROTE    THE   BIBLE? 

me  in  this  generation."  These  repetitions  show 
how  the  same  story  is  twice  told.  But  the  con- 
tradictions are  more  significant.  Here  the  one 
narrative  represents  Elohim  as  saying  (vi.  19)  : 
"  And  of  every  living  thing  of  all  flesh,  two  of 
every  kind  shalt  thou  bring  into  the  ark  to  keep 
them  alive  with  thee  ;  they  shall  be  male  and 
female.  Of  the  fowl  after  their  kind  and  of  the 
cattle  after  their  kind,  of  every  creeping  thing  of 
the  earth  after  its  kind,  two  of  every  sort  shall 
come  unto  thee  to  keep  them  alive."  But  the 
other  narrative  represents  Jehovah  as  saying, 
'•  Of  every  clean  beast  thou  shalt  take  to  thee 
seven  and  seven,  the  male  and  the  female  ;  and 
of  the  beasts  that  are  not  clean,  two,  the  male 
and  the  female ;  of  the  fowl  also  of  the  air  seven 
and  seven,  male  and  female,  to  keep  seed  alive 
upon  the  face  of  all  the  earth."  The  one  story 
says  that  of  every  kind  of  living  creature  one  pair 
should  be  taken  into  the  ark  ;  the  other  says  that 
of  clean  beasts,  seven  pairs  of  each  species  should 
be  received,  and  of  unclean  beasts  only  one  pair. 
The  harmonists  have  wrestled  with  this  passage 
also  ;  some  of  them  say  that  perhaps  the  first 
passage  only  meant  that  they  should  walk  in  two 
and  two  ;  others  say  that  a  good  many  years  had 
elapsed  between  the  giving  of  the  two  commands' 
(of  which  there  is  not  a  particle  of  evidence),  and 
we  are  left  to  infer  that  in  the  mean  time  the 
Almighty  either  forgot  his  first  orders,  or  else 
changed  his  mind.     It  is  a  pitiful  instance  of  an 


SOURCES  OF   77/ E  PENTATEUCH.  53 

attempt  to  evade  a  difficulty  that  cannot  be 
evaded.  One  of  the  very  conservative  commen- 
tators, Dr.  Perowne,  in  Smith's  "  Bible  Diction- 
ary," concludes  to  face  it  :  "  May  we  not  sup- 
pose," he  timidly  asks,  **  that  we  have  here  traces 
of  a  separate  document,  interwoven  by  a  later 
writer,  with  the  former  history }  The  passage 
has  not,  indeed,  been  incorporated  intact,  but 
there  is  a  coloring  about  it  which  seems  to  indi- 
cate that  Moses,  or  whoever  put  the  book  of 
Genesis  into  its  present  shape,  had  here  con- 
sulted a  different  narrative.  The  distinct  use  of 
the  divine  names  in  the  same  phrase  (vi.  22  ;  vii. 
5),  in  the  former  Elohim,  in  the  latter  Jehovah, 
suggests  that  this  may  have  been  the  case."  ^ 

"  May  we  not  suppose,"  the  good  doctor  asks, 
that  we  have  traces  of  two  documents  here  ? 
Certainly,  your  reverence.  It  is  just  as  safe  to 
suppose  it,  as  it  is  to  suppose,  when  you  see  a 
nose  on  a  man's  face,  that  it  is  a  nose.  There  is 
no  more  doubt  about  it  than  there  is  about  any 
other  palpable  fact.  The  truth  is,  that  the  com- 
posite character  of  Genesis  is  no  longer,  in  schol- 
arly circles,  an  open  question.  The  most  cau- 
tious, the  most  conservative  of  scholars  concede 
the  point.  Even  President  Bartlett,  of  Dart- 
mouth College,  a  Hebraist  of  some  eminence, 
and  as  sturdy  a  defender  of  old-fashioned  ortho- 
doxy as  this  country  holds,  made  this  admission 
more  than  twenty  years  ago:  **\Ve  may  accept 

1  Art.  ''  Noah,"  iii.  2179,  American  Edition. 


54  i^'-f^O    WROTE    THE   BIBLE? 

the  traces  of  earlier  narratives  as  having  been 
employed  and  authenticated  by  him  [Moses] ;  and 
we  may  admit  the  marks  of  later  date  as  indica- 
tions of  a  surface  revision  of  authorized  persons 
not  later  than  Ezra  and  Nehemiah."  And  Dr. 
Porovvne,  the  conservative  scholar  already  quoted, 
in  the  article  on  the  '*  Pentateuch  "  in  "  Smith's 
Bible  Dictionary,"  sums  up  as  follows  :  — 

*'  I.  The  Book  of  Genesis  rests  chiefly  on  doc- 
uments much  earlier  than  the  time  of  Moses, 
though  it  was  probably  brought  to  very  nearly 
its  present  shape  either  by  Moses  himself,  or  by 
one  of  the  elders  who  acted  under  him. 

"  2.  The  books  of  Exodus,  Leviticus,  and  Num- 
bers are  to  a  great  extent  Mosaic.  Besides  those 
portions  which  are  expressly  declared  to  have 
been  written  by  him,  other  portions,  and  espe- 
cially the  legal  sections,  were,  if  not  actually 
written,  in  all  probability  dictated  by  him. 

"3.  Deuteronomy,  excepting  the  concluding 
part,  is  entirely  the  work  of  Moses,  as  it  professes 
to  be. 

*'  5.  The  first  compositioji  of  the  Pentateuch  as 
a  whole  could  not  have  taken  place  till  after  the 
Israelites  entered  Canaan. 

"6.  The  whole  work  did  not  finally  assume  its 
present  shape  till  its  revision  was  undertaken  by 
Ezra  after  the  return  from  the  Babylonish  cap- 
tivity." 

The  volume  from  which  I  have  quoted  these 


SOURCES  OF   rilE   rENTATEUCH.  55 

words  bears  the  date  of  1870.  Twenty  years  of 
very  busy  work  have  been  expended  upon  the 
Pentateuch  since  Dr.  Perowne  wrote  these  words  ; 
if  he  were  to  write  to-day  he  would  be  much  less 
confident  that  Moses  wrote  the  whole  of  Deuter- 
onomy, and  he  would  probably  modify  his  state- 
ments in  other  respects  ;  but  he  would  retract 
none  of  these  admissions  respecting  the  compos- 
ite character  of  these  five  books. 

The  same  fact  of  a  combination  of  different 
documents  can  easily  be  shown  in  all  the  three 
middle  books  of  the  Pentateuch,  as  well  as  in 
Genesis.  This  is  the  fact  which  explains  those 
repetitions  of  laws,  and  those  singular  breaks  in 
the  history,  to  which  I  called  your  attention  in 
the  last  chapter.  There  is,  as  I  believe,  a  large 
element  of  purely  Mosaic  legislation  in  these 
books  ;  many  of  these  laws  were  written  either 
by  the  hand  of  Moses  or  under  his  eye ;  and  the 
rest  are  so  conformed  to  the  spirit  which  he  im- 
pressed upon  the  Hebrew  jurisprudence  that  they 
may  be  fairly  called  Mosaic ;  but  many  of  them, 
on  the  other  hand,  were  written  long  after  his 
day,  and  the  whole  Pentateuch  did  not  reach  its 
present  form  until  after  the  exile,  in  the  days  of 
Ezra  and  Nehemiah. 

The  upholders  of  the  traditional  theory  —  that 
Moses  wrote  the  Pentateuch,  just  as  Blackstone 
wrote  his  Commentaries  —  are  wont  to  make  much 
account  of  the  disagreements  of  those  critics  who 
have  undertaken  to  analyze  it  into  its  component 


56  J^V/IO    WROTE    THE   BIBLE? 

parts.  "  These  critics,"  they  say,  "  are  all  at  log- 
gerheads ;  they  do  not  agree  with  one  another ; 
none  of  them  even  agrees  with  himself  very  long  ; 
most  of  them  have  several  times  revised  their 
theories,  and  there  seems  to  be  neither  certainty 
nor  coherency  in  their  speculations."  But  this  is 
not  quite  true.  With  respect  to  some  subordinate 
questions  they  are  not  agreed,  and  probably  never 
will  be  ;  but  with  respect  to  the  fact  that  these 
books  are  composite  in  their  origin  they  are  per- 
fectly agreed,  and  they  are  also  remarkably  unan- 
imous in  their  judgments  as  to  where  the  lines 
of  cleavage  run  between  these  component  parts. 
\  The  consensus  of  critical  opinion  now  is  that 
there  are  at  least  four  great  documents  which 
have  been  combined  in  the  Pentateuch ;  and  the 
critics  agree  in  the  main  features  of  the  analysis, 
though  they  do  not  all  call  these  separated  parts 
by  the  same  names,  nor  do  they  all  think  alike 
concerning  the  relative  antiquity  of  these  por- 
tions. Some  think  that  one  of  these  documents 
is  the  oldest,  and  some  give  that  distinction  to 
another ;  nor  do  they  agree  as  to  how  old  the  old- 
est is,  some  bringing  the  earliest  composition  down 
to  a  recent  period  ;  but  on  the  main  question  that 
the  literature  is  composite  they  are  at  one.  The 
closeness  of  their  agreement  is  shown  by  Pro- 
fessor Ladd  in  a  series  of  tables  ^  in  which  he 
displays  to  the  eye  the  results  of  the  analysis  of 
four   independent  investigators,    Knobel,    Schra- 

1  T/ic  Doctr'nie  of  Saci'cd Scripture^  Part  II.  chap.  vii. 


SOURCES  OF   THE  PENTATEUCH.  57 

der,  Dillmann,  and  Wellhausen.  He  goes  through 
the  whole  of  the  Pentateuch  and  the  Book  of 
Joshua, — the  Hexateuch,  as  it  is  now  called, — 
and  picks  out  of  every  chapter  those  verses  as- 
signed by  these  several  authorities  to  that  an- 
cient writing  which  we  have  been  calling  the 
Elohistic  narrative,  and  arranges  them  in  par- 
allel columns.  You  can  see  at  a  glance  when 
they  agree  in  this  analysis,  and  when  they  dis- 
agree. I  think  that  you  would  be  astonished  to 
find  that  the  agreements  are  so  many  and  the 
disagreements  so  few.  So  much  unity  of  judg- 
ment would  be  impossible  if  the  lines  of  cleavage 
between  these  old  documents  were  not  marked 
with  considerable  distinctness.  ''The  only  satis- 
factory explanation,"  says  Professor  Ladd,  "  of  the 
possibility  of  accomplishing  such  a  work  of  analy- 
sis is  the  fact  that  the  analysis  is  substantially 
correct."  ^ 

Professor  C.  A.  Briggs,  of  the  Union  (Presby- 
terian) Theological  Seminary  in  New  York,  bore 
this  testimony  three  years  ago  in  the  "  Presbyte- 
rian Review  :  "  ''The  critical  analysis  of  the  Hex- 
ateuch is  the  result  of  more  than  a  century  of 
profound  study  of  the  documents  by  the  greatest 
critics  of  the  age.  There  has  been  a  steady  ad- 
vance until  the  present  position  of  agreement  has 
been  reached,  in  which  Jew  and  Christian,  Ro- 
man Catholic  and  Protestant,  Rationalistic  and 
Evangelical    scholars.    Reformed   and   Lutheran, 

1   What  is  the  Bible .?  p.  31 1. 


58  IVIIO    WROTE    THE   BIBLE? 

Presbyterian  and  Episcopal,  Unitarian,  Metho- 
dist, and  Baptist  all  concur.  The  analysis  of 
the  Hexateuch  into  several  distinct  original  doc- 
uments is  a  purely  literary  question  in  which  no 
article  of  faith  is  involved.  Whoever  in  these 
times,  in  the  discussion  of  the  literary  phenom- 
ena of  the  Hexateuch,  appeals  to  the  ignorance 
and  prejudices  of  the  multitude  as  if  there  were 
any  peril  to  faith  in  these  processes  of  the  Higher 
Criticism,  risks  his  reputation  for  scholarship  by 
so  doing.  There  are  no  Hebrew  professors  on 
the  continent  of  Europe,  so  far  as  I  know,  who 
would  deny  the  literary  analysis  of  the  Pentateuch 
into  the  four  great  documents.  The  professors  of 
Hebrew  in  the  Universities  of  Oxford,  Cambridge, 
and  Edinburgh,  and  tutors  in  a  large  number  of 
theological  colleges,  hold  to  the  same  opinion,  v  A 
very  considerable  number  of  the  Hebrew  profes- 
sors of  America  are  in  accord  with  them.  There 
are,  indeed,  a  few  professional  scholars  who  hold 
to  the  traditional  opinion,  but  these  are  in  a  hope- 
less minority.  I  doubt  whether  there  is  any  ques- 
tion of  scholarship  whatever  in  which  there  is 
greater  agreement  among  scholars  than  in  this 
question  of  the  literary  analysis  of  the  Hexa- 
teuch." 

I  have  but  one  more  witness  to  introduce,  and 
it  shall  be  the  distinguished  German  professor 
Delitzsch,  who  has  long  been  regarded  as  the 
bulwark  of  evangelical  orthodoxy  in  Germany, 
"  His  name,"  says  Professor  Ladd,  *'  has  for  many 


SOUKCES  OF   Tllli   PRXTATEUCIf.  59 

years  been  connected  wilh  the  conception  of  a 
devout  Christian  scholarship  used  in  the  defense 
of  the  faith  against  attacks  upon  the  supernatural 
character  of  the  Old  Testament  religion  and  of 
the  writings  which  record  its  development."  In 
a  preface  to  his  commentary  on  Isaiah  published 
since  his  recent  death,  he  speaks  with  great  hu- 
mility of  the  work  that  he  has  done,  adding,  "  Of 
one  thing  only  do  I  think  I  may  be  confident, — 
that  the  spirit  by  which  it  is  animated  comes  from 
the  good  Spirit  that  guides  along  the  everlasting 
way."  The  opinion  of  such  a  scholar  ought  to 
have  weight  with  all  serious-minded  Christians. 
When  I  give  you  his  latest  word  on  this  question, 
you  will  recognize  that  you  have  all  that  the 
ripest  and  most  devout  scholarship  can  claim. 
Let  me  quote,  then,  Professor  Ladd's  abstract  of 
his  verdict :  — 

"  In  the  opinion  of  Professor  Delitzsch  only  the 
basis  of  the  several  codes  .  .  .  incorporated  in 
the  Pentateuch  is  Mosaic ;  the  form  in  which 
these  codes  .  .  .  are  presented  in  the  Pentateuch 
is  of  an  origin  much  later  than  the  time  of  Moses. 
The  Decalogue  and  the  laws  forming  the  Book  of 
the  Covenant  are  the  most  ancient  portions  ;  they 
preserve  the  Mosaic  type  in  its  relatively  oldest 
and  purest  form.  Of  this  type  Deuteronomy  is 
a  devclopine7tt.  The  statement  that  Moses  '  wrote ' 
the  Deuteronomic  law  (Deut.  xxxi.  9,  24)  docs  not 
refer  to  the  present  Book  of  Deuteronomy^  but  to  the 
code  of  laws  whicJi  underlies  it. 


Co  WHO    WROTE    THE  BIBLE? 

"The  Priest's  Code,  which  embodies  the  more 
distinctively  ritualistic  and  ceremonial  legislation, 
is  the  result  of  a  long  and  progressive  develop- 
ment. Certain  of  its  principles  originated  with 
Moses,  but  its  form,  which  is  utterly  unlike  that 
of  the  other  parts  of  the  Pentateuch,  was  received 
at  the  hands  of  the  priests  of  the  nation.  Proba- 
bly some  particular  priest,  at  a  much  later  date, 
indeed,  than  the  time  of  Moses,  but  prior  to  the 
composition  of  Deuteronomy,  was  especially  in- 
fluential in  shaping  it.  But  the  last  stages  of  its 
development  may  belong  to  the  period  after  the 
Exile. 

"The  historical  traditions  which  are  incorpo- 
rated into  the  Hexateuch  were  committed  to  writ- 
ing at  different  times  and  by  different  hands. 
The  narratives  of  them  are  superimposed,  as  it 
were,  stratum  upon  stratum,  in  the  Pentateuch 
and  the  Book  of  Joshua.  For  the  Book  of  Joshua 
is  connected  intimately  with  the  Pentateuch,  and 
when  analyzed  shows  the  same  composite  struc- 
ture. The  differences  which  the  several  codes 
exhibit  are  due  to  modifications  which  they  re- 
ceived in  the  course  of  history  as  they  w^ere  vari- 
ously collected,  revised,  and  passed  from  genera- 
tion to  generation.  .  .  .  The  Pentateuch,  like  all 
the  other  historical  books  of  the  Bible,  is  com- 
posed of  documentary  sources,  differing  alike  in 
character  and  age,  which  critical  analysis  may 
still  be  able,  with  greater  or  less  certainty,  to  dis- 
tmguish  and  separate  from  one  another."  ^ 

1  What  is  the  Bible  ?  pp.  4S9-491, 


SOURCES  OF  THE  PENTATEUCH.  6 1 

That  such  is  the  fact  with  respect  to  the  struc- 
ture of  these  ancient  writings  is  now  beyond  ques- 
tion. And  our  theory  of  inspiration  must  be  ad- 
justed to  this  fact.  Evidently  neither  the  theory 
of  verbal  inspiration,  nor  the  theory  of  plenary 
inspiration  can  be  made  to  fit  the  facts  which  a 
careful  study  of  the  writings  themselves  bring 
before  us.  These  writings  are  not  inspired  in 
the  sense  which  we  have  commonly  given  to  that 
word.  The  verbal  theory  of  inspiration  was  only 
tenable  while  they  were  supposed  to  be  the  work 
of  a  single  author.  To  such  a  composite  litera- 
ture no  such  theory  will  apply.  **  To  make  this 
claim,"  says  Professor  Ladd,  *'and  yet  accept  the 
best  ascertained  results  of  criticism,  would  com- 
pel us  to  take  such  positions  as  the  following : 
The  original  authors  of  each  one  of  the  writings 
which  enter  into  the  composite  structure  were 
infallibly  inspired  ;  every  one  who  made  any 
changes  in  any  one  of  these  fundamental  writ- 
ings was  infallibly  inspired  ;  every  compiler  who 
put  together  two  or  more  of  these  writings  was 
infallibly  inspired,  both  as  to  his  selections  and 
transmissions  [omissions  .**],  and  as  to  any  con- 
necting or  explanatory  words  which  he  might 
himself  write ;  every  redactor  was  infallibly  in- 
spired to  correct  and  supplement  and  omit  that 
which  was  the  product  of  previous  infallible  in- 
spirations. Or  perhaps  it  might  seem  more  con- 
venient to  attach  the  claim  of  a  plenary  inspira- 
tion  to   the   last   redactor   of    all  ;    but    then   we 


62  WI/0    WROTE    THE  BIBLE? 

should  probably  have  selected  of  all  others  the 
one  least  able  to  bear  the  weight  of  such  a  claim. 
Think  of  making  the  claim  for  a  plenary  inspira- 
tion of  the  Pentateuch  in  its  present  form  on 
the  ground  of  the  infallibility  of  that  one  of  the 
Scribes  who  gave  it  its  last  touches  some  time 
subsequent  to  the  date  of  Ezra  !  "  ^ 

And  yet  this  does  not  signify  that  these  books 
are  valueless.  When  it  was  discovered  that  the 
Homeric  writings  were  not  all  the  work  of  Ho- 
mer, the  value  of  the  Homeric  writings  was  not 
affected.  As  pictures  of  the  life  of  that  remote 
antiquity  they  had  not  lost  their  significance. 
The  value  of  these  Mosaic  books  is  of  a  very  dif- 
ferent sort  from  that  of  the  Homeric  writings, 
but  the  discoveries  of  the  Higher  Criticism  affect 
them  no  more  seriously.  Even  their  historical 
character  is  by  no  means  overthrown.  You  can 
find  in  Herodotus  and  in  Livy  discrepancies  and 
contradictions,  but  this  does  not  lead  you  to  re- 
gard their  writings  as  worthless.  There  are  no 
infallible  histories,  but  that  is  no  reason  why  you 
should  not  studyvhistory,  or  why  you  should  read 
all  history  with  the  inclination  to  reject  every 
statement  which  is  not  forced  on  your  acceptance 
by  evidence  which  you  cannot  gainsay. 

These  books  of  Moses  are  the  treasury,  indeed, 
of  no  little  valuable  history.  They  are  not  infal- 
lible, but  they  contain  a  great  deal  of  truth  which, 
we  find  nowhere  else,  and  which  is  yet  wonder- 

1   TJie  Doctrine  of  Sacred  Scripture,  i.  499. 


SOURCES  OF  77/ E  PENTATEUC7I?  6^ 

fully  corroborated  by  all  that  vvc  do  know.  Ewald 
declares  that  in  the  fourteenth  chapter  of  Gene- 
sis Abraham  is  brought  before  us  "  in  the  clear 
light  of  history."  From  monuments  and  other 
sources  the  substantial  accuracy  of  this  narra- 
tive is  confirmed  ;  and  the  account  of  the  visit 
of  Abraham  to  Egypt  conforms,  in  all  its  minute 
incidents,  to  the  life  of  Egypt  at  that  time.  The 
name  Pharaoh  is  the  right  name  for  the  kings 
reigning  then  ;  the  behavior  of  the  servants  of 
Pharaoh  is  perfectly  in  keeping  with  the  popular 
ideas  and  practices  as  the  monuments  reveal 
them.  The  story  of  Joseph  has  been  confirmed, 
as  to  its  essential  accuracy,  as  to  the  verisimili- 
tude of  its  pictures  of  Egyptian  life,  by  every  re- 
cent discovery.  Georg  Ebers  declares  that  *'  this 
narrative  contains  nothing  which  does  not  accu- 
rately correspond  to  a  court  of  Pharaoh  in  the 
best  times  of  the  Kingdom."  Many  features  of 
this  narrative  which  a  rash  skepticism  has  as- 
sailed have  been  verified  by  later  discoveries. 

We  are  told  in  the  Exodus  that  the  Israelites 
were  impressed  by  Pharaoh  into  building  for  him 
two  store-cities  ("  treasure  cities,"  the  old  ver- 
sion calls  them),  named  Pithom  and  Rameses,  and 
that  in  this  work  they  were  made  to  *'  serve  with 
rigor;"  that  their  lives  were  embittered  "with 
hard  service  in  mortar  and  brick  and  all  manner 
of  hard  service  in  the  field  ;"  that  they  were 
sometimes  forced  to  make  brick  without  straw. 
The  whereabouts  of   these  store-cities,  and   the 


64  JVI/O    WROTE    THE  BIBLE  ? 

precise  meaning  of  the  term  applied  to  them,  has 
been  a  matter  of  much  conjecture,  and  the  story 
has  sometimes  been  set  aside  as  a  myth.  To 
Pithom  there  is  no  clear  historical  reference  in 
any  other  book  except  Exodus.  Only  four  or 
five  years  ago  a  Genevese  explorer  unearthed, 
near  the  route  of  the  Suez  Canal,  this  very  city ; 
found  several  ruined  monuments  with  the  name 
of  the  city  plainly  inscribed  on  them,  ''Pi  Tum," 
and  excavating  still  further  uncovered  a  ruin  of 
which  the  following  is  Mr.  Rawlinson's  descrip- 
tion :  *'The  town  is  altogether  a  square,  inclosed 
by  a  brick  wall  twenty-two  feet  thick,  and  meas- 
uring six  hundred  and  fifty  feet  along  each  side. 
Nearly  the  whole  of  the  space  is  occupied  by  sol- 
idly built,  square  chambers,  divided  one  from  an- 
other by  brick  walls,  from  eight  to  ten  feet  thick, 
which  are  unpierced  by  window  or  door  or  open- 
ing of  any  kind.  About  ten  feet  from  the  bot- 
tom the  walls  show  a  row  of  recesses  for  beams, 
in  some  of  which  decayed  wood  still  remains,  in- 
dicating that  the  buildings  were  two-storied,  hav- 
ing a  lower  room  which  could  only  be  entered  by 
a  trap-door,  used  probably  as  a  store-house,  or 
magazine,  and  an  upper  one  in  which  the  keeper 
of  the  store  may  have  had  his  abode.  Therefore 
this  discovery  is  simply  that  of  a  'store-city,' 
built  partly  by  Rameses  II.;  but  it  further  ap- 
pears from  several  short  inscriptions,  that  the 
name  of  the  city  was  Pa  Tum,  or  Pithom  ;  and 
thus  there  is  no  reasonable  doubt  that  one  of  the 


SOURCES  OF   THE  PENTATEUCH.  65 

two  cities  built  by  the  Israelites  has  been  laid 
bare,  and  answers  completely  to  the  description 
given  of  it."  ^ 

The  walls  of  Egypt  were  not  all  laid  with  mor- 
tar, but  the  record  speaks  of  mortar  in  this  case, 
and  here  it  is  :  the  several  courses  of  these  build- 
ings were  usually  "laid  with  mortar  in  regular 
tiers."  More  striking  still  is  the  fact  that  in 
some  of  these  buildings,  while  the  lower  tiers  are 
composed  of  bricks  having  straw  in  them,  the 
upper  tiers  consist  of  a  poorer  quality  of  bricks 
without  straw.  Photographs  may  be  seen  in  this 
country  of  some  of  these  brick  granaries  of  this 
old  store-city  of  Pithom,  with  the  line  of  division 
plainly  showing  between  the  two  kinds  of  bricks  ; 
and  thus  we  have  before  our  eyes  a  most  strik- 
ing confirmation  of  the  truth  of  this  story  of  the 
bondage  of  the  Israelites  in  Egypt.  Quite  a 
number  of  such  testimonies  to  the  substantial 
historical  verity  of  these  Old  Testament  records 
have  been  discovered  in  recent  years  as  old 
mounds  have  been  opened  in  Egypt  and  in  Chal- 
dea,  and  the  monuments  of  buried  centuries  have 
told  their  story  to  the  wondering  world.  The 
books  are  not  infallible,  but  he  who  sets  them  all 
aside  as  a  collection  of  myths  or  fables  exposes 
his  ignorance  in  a  lamentable  way. 

But  what  is  far  more  to  the  purpose,  the  ideas 
running  all  through  the  old  literature,  the  con- 
structive truths  of  science,  of  ethics,  of  religion, 

1  Quoted  by  Robinson  in  The  Pharaohs  of  the  Bondage,  p.  97. 


66  WHO    WROTE    THE  BIBLE? 

are  pure  and  lofty  and  full  of  saving  power. 
Even  science,  I  say,  owes  much  to  Genesis.  The 
story  of  the  Creation  in  the  first  chapter  of  Gen- 
esis must  not  indeed  be  taken  for  veritable  his- 
tory ;  but  it  is  a  solemn  hymn  in  which  some 
great  truths  of  the  world's  origin  are  sublimely  set 
forth.  It  gives  us  the  distinct  idea  of  the  unity 
of  Creation,  —  sweeping  away,  at  one  mighty 
stroke,  the  whole  system  of  naturalistic  polythe- 
ism, which  makes  science  impossible,  when  it  de- 
clares that  "In  the  beginning  God  created  the 
heavens  and  the  earth."  In  the  same  words  it 
sets  forth  the  truth  by  whose  light  science  alone 
walks  safely,  that  the  source  of  all  things  is  a 
spiritual  cause.  The  God  from  whose  power  all 
things  proceed  is  not  a  fortuitous  concourse  of 
atoms,  but  a  spiritual  intelligence.  From  this  liv- 
ing God  came  forth  matter  with  its  forces,  life 
with  its  organisms,  mind  with  its  freedom.  And 
although  it  may  not  be  possible  to  force  the 
words  of  this  ancient  hymn  into  scientific  state- 
ments of  the  order  of  creation,  it  is  most  clear 
that  it  implies  a  continuous  process,  a  law  of  de- 
velopment, in  the  generations  of  the  heaven  and 
the  earth.  This  is  not  a  scientific  treatise  of  cre- 
ation, but  the  alphabet  of  science  is  here,  as  Dr. 
Newman  Smyth  has  said  ;  and  it  is  correct.  The 
guiding  lights  of  scientific  study  are  in  these 
great  principles. 

Similarly  the  ethical  elements  and  tendencies 
of  these  old  writings  are  sound  and  strong.     I 


SOURCES  OF   TlIK   PENTATEUCH.  G'J 

have  shown  you  how  defective  many  of  the  Mo- 
saic laws  are  when  judged  by  Christian  stand- 
ards ;  but  all  this  legislation  contains  formative 
ideas  and  principles  by  which  it  tends  to  purify 
itself.  Human  sacrifices  were  common  among 
the  surrounding  nations  ;  the  story  of  Abraham 
and  Isaac  banishes  that  horror  forever  from  He- 
brew history.  Slavery  was  universal,  but  the  law 
of  the  Jubilee  Year  made  an  end  of  domestic 
slavery  in  Israel.  The  family  was  foundation- 
less  ;  the  wife's  rights  rested  wholly  on  the  ca- 
price of  her  husband  ;  but  that  law  of  divorce 
which  I  quoted  to  you,  and  which  our  Lord  re- 
pealed, set  some  bounds  to  this  caprice,  for  the 
husband  was  compelled  to  go  through  certain 
formalities  before  he  could  turn  his  wife  out  of 
doors.  The  law  of  blood  vengeance,  though  in 
terms  it  authorized  murder,  yet  in  effect  power- 
fully restrained  the  violence  of  that  rude  age, 
and  gave  a  chance  for  the  development  of  that 
idea  of  the  sacredness  of  life  which  to  us  is  a 
moral  commonplace,  but  which  had  scarcely 
dawned  upon  the  minds  of  those  old  Hebrews. 
Thus  the  history  shows  a  people  moving  steadily 
forward  under  moral  leadership,  out  of  barbarism 
into  higher  civilization,  and  we  can  trace  the  very 
process  by  which  the  moral  maxims  which  to  us 
are  almost  axioms  have  been  cleared  of  the  crudi- 
ties of  passion  and  animalism,  and  stamped  upon 
the  consciousness  of  men.  Is  not  God  in  all  this 
history } 


6S  WHO    WROTE    THE  BIBLE? 

Those  first  principles  which  I  have  called  the 
guiding  lights  of  science  are  also  the  elements  of 
pure  religion.  Science  and  religion  spell  out  dif- 
ferent messages  to  men,  but  they  start  with  the 
same  alphabet.  And  the  religious  purity  of  that 
hymn  of  the  Creation  is  not  less  wonderful  than 
its  scientific  verity.  Compare  it  with  the  other 
traditional  stories  of  the  origin  of  things  ;  com- 
pare it  with  the  mythologies  of  Egypt,  of  Chal- 
dea,  of  Greece  and  Rome,  and  see  how  far  above 
them  it  stands  in  spiritual  dignity,  in  moral  beauty. 
*'  We  could  more  easily,  indeed,"  says  Dr.  Newman 
Smyth,  **  compute  how  much  a  pure  spring  well- 
ing up  at  the  source  of  a  brook  that  widens  into 
a  river,  has  done  for  meadow  and  grass  and  flow- 
ers and  overhanging  trees,  for  thousands  of  years, 
than  estimate  the  influence  of  this  purest  of  all 
ancient  traditions  of  the  Creation,  as  it  has  en- 
tered into  the  lives  and  revived  the  consciences 
of  men  ;  as  it  has  purified  countries  of  idolatries 
and  swept  away  superstition  ;  and  has  flowed  on 
and  on  with  the  increasing  truth  of  history,  and 
kept  fresh  and  fruitful,  from  generation  to  gener- 
ation, faith  in  the  One  God  and  the  common  par- 
entage of  men."  ^ 

Above  all,  we  find  in  all  this  literature  the  plant- 
ing and  the  first  germination  of  that  great  hope 
which  turned  the  thought  of  this  people  from  the 
earliest  generations  toward  the  future,  and  made 
them  trust  and  pray  and  wait,  in  darkest  times, 

1  Old  Faiths  in  N'ew  Eighty  p.  T}^. 


SOU/^CES  OF  THE  rENTATEUCH.  69 

for  better  days  to  come.  *'  Speak  unto  the  children 
of  Israel  that  they  go  forward  !  "  This  is  the  voice 
that  is  always  sounding  from  the  heights  above 
them,  whether  they  halt  by  the  shore  of  the  sea, 
or  bivouac  in  the  wilderness.  They  do  not  always 
obey  the  voice,  but  it  never  fails  to  rouse  and 
summon  them.  No  people  of  all  history  has  lived 
in  the  future  as  Israel  did.  "By  faith"  they 
worshiped  and  trusted  and  wrought  and  fought, 
the  worthies  of  this  old  religion  ;  towards  lands 
that  they  had  not  seen  they  set  their  faces  ;  con- 
cerning things  to  come  they  were  always  prophe- 
sying;  and  it  is  this  great  hope  that  forms  the 
germ  of  the  Messianic  expectation  by  which  they 
reach  forth  to  the  glories  of  the  latter  day.  This 
attitude  of  Israel,  in  all  the  generations,  is  the 
one  striking  feature  of  this  history.  No  soulless 
sphinx  facing  a  trackless  desert  with  blind  eyes 
—  no  impassive  Buddha  ensphered  in  placid  si- 
lence —  is  the  genius  of  this  people,  but  some 
strong  angel  poised  on  mighty  pinion  above  the 
highest  peak  of  Pisgah,  and  scanning  with  swift 
glances  the  beauty  of  the  promised  land.  Now 
any  people  of  which  this  is  true  must  be,  in  a 
large  sense  of  the  word,  an  inspired  people  ;  and 
their  literature,  with  all  the  signs  of  imperfection 
which  must  appear  in  it,  on  account  of  the  me- 
dium through  which  it  comes,  will  give  proof  of 
the  divine  ideas  and  forces  that  are  working 
themselves  out  in  their  history. 

It  is  in  this  large  way  of  looking  at  the  Hebrew 


JO  WHO   WROTE    rilE   BIBLE? 

literature  that  we  discover  its  real  prcciousness. 
And  when  we  get  this  large  conception,  then 
petty  questions  about  the  absolute  accuracy  of 
texts  and  dates  no  longer  trouble  us.  "  He  who 
has  once  gained  this  broader  view  of  the  Bible," 
says  Dr.  Newman  Smyth,  "as  the  development  of 
a  course  of  history  itself  guided  and  inspired  by 
Jehovah,  will  not  be  disconcerted  by  the  confused 
noises  of  the  critic.  His  faith  in  the  Word  of 
God  lies  deeper  than  any  difficulties  or  flaws 
upon  the  surface  of  the  Bible.  He  will  not  be 
disturbed  by  seeing  any  theory  of  its  mechanical 
formation,  or  school-book  infallibility  broken  to 
fragments  under  the  repeated  blows  of  modern 
investigation ;  the  water  of  life  will  flow  from 
the  rock  which  the  scholar  strikes  with  his  rod. 
He  can  wait,  without  fear,  for  a  candid  and  thor- 
ough study  of  these  sacred  writings  to  determine, 
if  possible,  what  parts  are  genuine,  and  what  nar- 
ratives, if  any,  are  unhistorical.  His  belief  in  the 
Word  of  God,  from  generation  to  generation,  docs 
not  depend  upon  the  minor  incidents  of  the  Bib- 
lical stories  ;  it  would  not  be  destroyed  or  weak- 
ened, even  though  human  traditions  could  be 
shown  to  have  overgrown  some  parts  of  this 
sacred  history,  as  the  ivy,  creeping  up  the  wall  of 
the  church,  does  not  loosen  its  ancient  stones."^ 

1  Old  Faiths  in  New  Light,  p.  59. 


CHAPTER    IV. 

THE    EARLIER    HEBREW    HISTORIES. 

We  found  reasons,  in  previous  chapters,  for 
believing  that  considerable  portions  of  the  Leviti- 
cal  legislation  came  from  the  hands  of  Moses, 
although  the  narratives  of  the  Pentateuch  and 
many  of  its  laws  were  put  into  their  present  form 
long  after  the  time  of  Moses.  The  composite 
character  of  all  this  old  literature  has  been  dem- 
onstrated. The  fact  that  its  materials  were  col- 
lected from  several  sources,  by  a  process  extend- 
ing through  many  centuries,  and  that  the  work  of 
redaction  was  not  completed  until  the  people  re- 
turned from  the  exile  about  five  centuries  before 
Christ,  and  almost  a  thousand  years  after  the 
death  of  Moses,  are  facts  now  as  well  established 
as  any  other  results  of  scholarly  research. 

Nevertheless,  we  have  maintained  that  the  Is- 
raelites possessed,  when  they  entered  Canaan,  a 
considerable  body  of  legislation  framed  under  the 
eye  of  Moses  and  bearing  his  name.  Throughout 
the  Book  of  Joshua  this  legislation  is  frequently 
referred  to.  If  the  Book  of  Joshua  was,  as  we 
have  assumed,  originally  connected  with  the  first 
five  books,  constituting  what   is  now  called  the 


'J 2  WHO    WROTE    THE  BIBLE? 

Hexateuch,  if  these  six  books  were  put  into  their 
present  form  by  the  same  writers,  we  should  ex- 
pect that  the  Mosaic  legislation  would  be  clearly 
traced  through  all  these  books. 

But  when  we  go  forward  in  this  history  we 
come  at  once  upon  a  remarkable  fact.  The  Book 
of  Judges,  the  Book  of  Ruth,  and  the  two  books 
of  Samuel  cover  a  period  of  Jewish  history  esti- 
mated in  our  common  chronology  at  more  than 
four  hundred  years,  and  in  these  four  books  there 
is  no  mention  whatever  of  that  Mosaic  legislation 
which  constituted,  as  we  have  supposed,  the  germ 
of  the  Pentateuch.  The  name  of  Moses  is  men- 
tioned only  six  times  in  these  four  books ;  twice 
in  the  early  chapters  of  the  Judges  in  connection 
with  the  settlement  of  the  kindred  of  his  wife  in 
Canaan  ;  once  in  a  reference  to  an  order  given 
by  Moses  that  Hebron  should  be  given  to  Caleb ; 
twice  in  a  single  passage'in  i  Samuel  xii.,  where 
Moses  and  Aaron  are  referred  to  as  leaders  of 
the  people  out  of  Egyptian  bondage,  and  once  in 
Judges  iii.  4,  where  it  is  said  that  certain  of  the 
native  races  were  left  in  Canaan,  "  to  prove  Israel 
by  them,  whether  they  would  hearken  to  the  com- 
mandments of  the  Lord  which  he  commanded 
their  fathers  by  the  hand  of  Moses."  This  last 
is  the  only  place  in  all  these  books  where  there 
is  the  faintest  allusion  to  any  legislation  left  to 
the  Israelites  by  Moses  ;  and  this  reference  does 
not  make  it  clear  whether  the  "commandments" 
referred  to  were  written  or  oral.    The  word  **  law  " 


TIIK   EARLIER  HEBREW  HISTORIES.         73 

is  not  found  in  these  four  books.  There  is  noth- 
ing in  any  of  these  books  to  indicate  that  the 
children  of  Israel  possessed  any  written  laws. 

There  are,  indeed,  in  Ruth  and  in  the  Judges 
frequent  accounts  of  observances  that  are  en- 
joined in  the  Pentateuch  ;  and  in  Samuel  we  read 
of  the  tabernacle  and  the  ark  and  the  offerinc:  of 
sacrifices ;  the  history  tells  us  that  some  of  the 
things  commanded  in  the  Mosaic  law  were  ob- 
served during  this  period ;  but  when  we  look  in 
these  books  for  any  reference  or  appeal  to  the 
sacred  writings  of  Moses,  or  to  any  other  sacred 
writings,  or  to  any  laws  or  statutes  or  written 
ordinances  for  the  government  of  the  people,  we 
look  in  vain.  Samuel  the  Prophet  anointed  Saul 
and  afterward  David  as  Kings  of  Israel  ;  but  if, 
on  these  solemn  occasions,  he  said  anything  about 
the  writings  of  Moses  or  the  law  of  Moses,  the 
fact  is  not  mentioned.  The  records  afford  us  no 
ground  for  affirming  that  either  Samuel  or  Saul 
was  aware  of  the  existence  of  such  sacred  writ- 


ings. 


This  is  a  notable  fact.  That  the  written  law 
of  Moses  should,  for  four  centuries  of  Hebrew 
history,  have  disappeared  so  completely  from  no- 
tice that  the  historian  did  not  find  it  necessary  to 
make  any  allusion  to  it,  is  a  circumstance  that 
needs  explanation. 

It  is  true,  as  I  have  said,  that  during  this  period 
certain  observances  required  by  the  law  were 
kept  more  or  less  regularly.     But  it  is  also  true 


74  ^y^^O    WROTE    THE  BIBLE? 

that  many  of  the  most  specific  and  solemn  re- 
quirements of  the  law  were  neglected  or  violated 
during  all  these  years  by  the  holiest  men.  The 
Mosaic  law  utterly  forbids  the  offering  of  sacri- 
fices at  any  other  place  than  the  central  sanctu- 
ary, the  tabernacle  or  the  temple  ;  but  the  narra- 
tive of  these  early  historical  books  shows  all  the 
saints  and  heroes  of  the  earlier  history  build- 
ing altars,  and  offering  sacrifices  freely  in  many 
places,  with  no  apparent  consciousness  of  trans- 
gression,—  nay,  with  the  strongest  assurance  of 
the  divine  approval.  **  Samuel,"  says  Professor 
Robertson  Smith,  **  sacrifices  on  many  high 
places,  Saul  builds  altars,  David  and  his  son  Sol- 
omon permit  the  worship  at  the  high  places  to 
continue,  and  the  historian  recognizes  this  as 
legitimate  because  the  temple  was  not  yet  built 
(i  Kings  iii.  2-4).  In  Northern  Israel  this  state 
of  things  was  never  changed.  The  high  places 
were  an  established  feature  in  the  Kingdom  of 
Ephraim,  and  Elijah  himself  declares  that  the 
destruction  of  the  altars  of  Jehovah  —  all  illegit- 
imate according  to  the  Pentateuch  —  is  a  breach 
of  Jehovah's  covenant."  ^ 

According  to  the  Levitical  law  it  was  positively 
unlawful  for  any  person  but  the  high  priest  ever 
to  go  into  the  innermost  sanctuary,  the  holy  of 
holies,  where  the  ark  of  God  was  kept  ;  and  the 
high  priest  could  go  into  that  awful  place  but 
once  a  year.     But  we  find  the  boy  Samuel  ac- 

1   771  e  Old  Testament  in  the  Jewish  Chufch,  pp.  220,  221. 


THE  B:ARLIER  HEBREW  HISTORIES.         75 

tually  sleeping  "  in  the  temple  of  the  Lord  where 
the  ark  of  the  Lord  was."  The  old  version  con- 
ceals this  fact  by  a  mistranslation.  These  are 
only  a  few  of  many  violations  of  the  Pentatcuchal 
legislation  which  we  find  recorded  in  these  books. 

From  the  silence  of  these  earlier  histories  con- 
cerning the  law  of  Moses,  and  from  these  many 
transgressions,  by  the  holiest  men,  of  the  posi- 
tive requirements  of  the  Pentatcuchal  legislation, 
the  conclusion  has  been  drawn  by  recent  critics 
that  the  Pentatcuchal  legislation  could  not  have 
been  in  existence  during  this  period  of  history  ; 
that  it  must  have  been  produced  at  a  later  day. 
It  must  be  admitted  that  they  make  out  a  strong 
case.  For  reasons  presented  in  the  second  chap- 
ter, I  am  unable  to  accept  their  theory.  It  is  prob- 
able, however,  that  the  code  of  laws  in  existence 
at  this  time  was  a  limited  and  simple  code  —  no 
such  elaborate  ritual  as  that  which  we  now  find 
in  the  Pentateuch  ;  and  that  those  particular  re- 
quirements with  respect  to  which  the  earlier 
Judges  and  Samuel  and  David  appear  to  behave 
themselves  so  disorderly,  had  not  then  been  en- 
acted. 

Moreover,  it  seems  to  be  necessary  to  admit 
that  there  was  a  surprising  amount  of  popular 
ignorance  respecting  even  those  portions  of  the 
law  which  were  then  in  existence.  This  is  the 
astonishing  phenomenon.  Attempts  are  made  to 
illustrate  it  by  the  ignorance  of  the  Bible  which 
prevailed  among  our  own  ancestors  before  the  in- 


76  WHO    WROTE    THE  BIBLE? 

vention  of  printing  ;  but  no  parallel  can  be  found, 
as  I  believe,  in  the  mediaeval  history  of  Europe. 
It  is  true  that  many  of  the  common  people  were 
altogether  unfamiliar  with  the  Bible  in  mediaeval 
times  ;  but  we  cannot  conceive  of  such  a  thing 
as  that  the  priests,  the  learned  men,  and  the  lead- 
ers of  the  church  at  that  time,  should  have  been 
unaware  of  the  existence  of  such  a  book. 

On  his  death-bed  David  is  said  to  have  admon- 
ished Solomon  (i  Kings  ii.  3),  that  he  should 
keep  the  statutes  and  commandments  of  the 
Lord,  "  according  to  that  which  is  written  in  the 
law  of  Moses."  This  is  the  first  reference  to  the 
Mosaic  law  which  we  find  in  connection  with  the 
history  of  David  ;  the  first  mention  of  a  written 
law  since  the  death  of  Joshua,  four  centuries  be- 
fore. After  this  there  are  three  other  casual  allu- 
sions to  the  law  of  Moses  in  the  first  book  of 
Kings,  and  four  in  the  second  book.  The  books 
of  Chronicles,  which  follow  the  Kings,  contain 
frequent  allusions  to  the  law  ;  but  these  books, 
as  we  shall  see  by  and  by,  were  written  long 
afterward  ;  and  the  tradition  which  they  embody 
cannot  be  so  safe  a  guide  as  that  of  the  earlier 
histories.  It  is  in  Chronicles  that  we  learn  of 
the  attempt  which  was  made  by  one  of  the  good 
kings  of  Judah,  Jehoshaphat,  to  have  certain 
princes,  priests,  and  Levites  appointed  to  teach 
the  law  ;  they  went  about  the  land,  it  is  said, 
teaching  the  people,  "  and  had  the  book  of  the 
law  of  Jehovah  with  them."     I  think  that  this  is 


THE  EARLIER  JIEDREIV  HISTORIES.         77 

the  first  intimation,  after  the  death  of  Moses,  that 
the  law  delivered  by  him  had  been  publicly  taught 
or  even  read  in  connection  with  the  ordinances 
of  worship.  The  earlier  narrative  of  Jehosha- 
phat's  reign,  which  we  find  in  the  Book  of  the 
Kings,  makes  no  allusion  to  this  circumstance. 

Nearly  three  hundred  years  after  Jehoshaphat, 
and  nearly  five  hundred  years  after  David,  the 
young  King  Josiah  was  reigning  in  Jerusalem. 
The  temple  had  fallen  into  ruin,  and  the  good 
king  determined  to  have  it  repaired.  Hilkiah, 
the  high  priest,  who  was  rummaging  among  the 
rubbish  of  the  dilapidated  sanctuary,  found  there 
the  Book  of  the  Law  of  the  Lord.  The  surprise 
which  he  manifests  at  this  discovery,  the  trepida- 
tion of  Shaphan  the  scribe,  who  hastens  to  tell 
the  king  about  it,  and  the  consternation  of  the 
king  when  he  listens  for  the  first  time  in  his  life 
to  the  reading  of  the  book,  and  discovers  how 
grievously  its  commandments  have  been  dis- 
obeyed, form  one  of  the  most  striking  scenes  of 
the  old  history.  "  How  are  we  to  explain,"  asks 
Dr.  Perowne,  "  this  surprise  and  alarm  in  the 
mind  of  Josiah,  betraying,  as  it  does,  such  utter 
ignorance  of  the  Book  of  the  Law  and  the  severity 
of  its  threatenings,  —  except  on  the  supposition 
that  as  a  written  document  it  had  well-nigh  per- 
ished }  "  1  Undoubtedly  *'  the  Book  of  the  Law  " 
thus  discovered  was  that  body  of  legislation  which 
lies  at  the  heart  of  the  Deuteronomic  code;  and 

1  Smith's  Bible  Dictionary^  art.  "  Pentateuch." 


78  IVI/O    WROTE    THE  BIBLE? 

this  was  never  again  lost  sight  of  by  the  Jewish 
people.  It  was  less  than  fifty  years  after  this 
that  Nebuchadnezzar  destroyed  the  city  and  the 
temple  and  carried  the  people  away  into  captiv- 
ity. And  it  was  not  until  their  return  from  the 
Captivity,  seventy  years  later,  that  these  sacred 
writings  began  to  assume  that  place  of  eminence 
in  the  religious  system  of  the  Jews  which  they 
have  held  in  later  times.  The  man  by  whom  the 
Jews  were  taught  to  cherish  and  study  these 
writings  was  Ezra,  one  of  the  returning  exiles. 
This  Ezra,  the  record  says,  "■  was  a  ready  scribe 
in  the  law  of  Moses  which  the  Lord  God  of  Israel 
had  given,"  and  "  he  had  prepared  his  heart  to 
seek  the  law  of  the  Lord,  and  to  do  it  and  to 
teach  in  Israel  statutes  and  judgments."  He  it 
was,  no  doubt,  who  gave  to  these  laws  their  last 
revision,  and  who  put  the  Pentateuch  substantially 
into  the  shape  in  which  we  have  it  now.  Doubt- 
less much  was  added  at  this  time  ;  ritual  rules 
which  had  been  handed  down  orally  were  written 
out  and  made  part  of  the  code  ;  the  Pentateuch, 
after  the  Exile,  was  a  more  elaborate  law  book 
than  that  which  Hilkiah  found  in  the  old  temple. 
Under  the  presidency  of  Ezra  in  Jerusalem,  and 
in  the  days  which  followed,  the  Book  of  the  Law 
was  exalted  ;  it  was  the  standard  of  authority  ;  it 
was  read  in  the  temple  and  explained  in  the  syn- 
agogues ;  its  writings  were  woven  into  all  the 
thought  and  life  of  the  people  of  Israel ;  there 
never  has  been  a  time  since  that  day  when  the 


THE  EARLIER  HEBREW  HISTORIES.         yc) 

history  of  the  reign  of  any  king  could  have  been 
written  without  mentioning  the  law  of  Moses  ; 
there  never  has  been  a  decade  when  any  adequate 
account  of  the  life  of  the  Jewish  people  could 
have  been  given  which  would  not  bring  this  book 
constantly  into  view. 

This  Book  of  the  Law,  as  finally  completed  by 
Ezra  and  his  co-laborers,  was  the  foundation  of 
the  Hebrew  Scriptures  ;  it  possessed  a  sacredness 
in  the  eyes  of  the  Jews  far  higher  than  that  per- 
taining to  any  other  part  of  their  writings.  Next 
to  this  in  age  and  importance  was  the  great  divi- 
sion of  their  Scriptures  known  by  them  as  ''The 
Prophets." 

After  the  Book  of  the  Law  was  given  to  the 
people  with  great  solemnity,  in  the  days  of  Ezra, 
and  the  public  reading  and  explanation  of  it  be- 
came a  principal  part  of  the  worship  of  the  Jews, 
it  began  to  be  noised  abroad  that  there  were  cer- 
tain other  sacred  writings  worthy  to  be  known 
and  treasured.  The  only  information  wc  have 
concerning  the  beginning  of  this  second  collec- 
tion is  found  in  one  of  the  apocryphal  books,  the 
second  of  Maccabees  (ii,  14),  in  which  we  are  told 
that  Neemias  (Nehemiah),  in  "founding  a  library, 
gathered  together  the  acts  of  the  kings,  and  [the 
writings  of]  the  prophets,  and  of  David,  and  the 
epistles  of  the  kings  concerning  the  holy  gifts." 
These  last  named  documents  are  not  now  in  ex- 
istence. They  appear  to  have  been  the  letters 
and  commissions  of  Babylonian  and  Persian  kings 


80  WHO  WROTE    THE  BIBLE? 

respecting  the  return  of  the  people  to  Jerusalem 
and  the  rebuilding  of  the  temple.  The  other 
writings  mentioned  are,  however,  all  known  to 
us,  and  are  included  in  our  collection.  It  is  not 
certain  that  Nehemiah  began  this  collection  ;  it 
may  have  been  initiated  before  his  day,  and  the 
"  founding "  of  the  library  may  have  been  only 
the  work  of  providing  for  the  preservation  and 
arrangement  of  books  already  in  his  possession. 
This  second  collection  of  sacred  writings,  called 
The  Prophets,  was  divided,  as  I  have  before 
stated,  into  the  Earlier  and  the  Later  Prophets ; 
the  former  subdivision  containing  the  books  of 
Joshua,^  Judges,  Samuel,  and  Kings ;  the  latter, 
the  books  which  we  now  regard  and  class  as  the 
prophecies.  Ruth  was  at  first  considered  as  a 
part  of  the  Judges,  and  was  included  among  the 
"Earlier  Prophets,"  and  Lamentations  was  ap- 
pended to  Jeremiah,  and  included  among  the 
"Later  Prophets."  These  two  books  were  after- 
ward removed  from  this  collection,  for  liturgical 
reasons,  and  placed  in  the  third  group  of  writings, 
of  which  we  shall  speak  farther  on. 

It  is  probable  that  the  prophetic  writings 
proper  were  first  collected  ;  but  it  will  be  more 
convenient  to  speak  first  of  the  books  known  to 
the  Jews  as  the  "Earlier  Prophets,"  and  to  us  as 
the  Old  Testament  Histories, — Judges,  Ruth, 
Samuel,  and  the  Kings. 

1  Joshua,  although  originally  a  portion  of  the  pentateuchal  lit- 
erature, was,  about  the  time  of  the  Exile,  separated  from  the  first 
five  books,  and  put  into  this  later  collection. 


THE  EARLIER  HEBREW  HISTORIES.         8 1 

These  books  take  up  the  history  of  Israel  at 
the  death  of  Joshua,  and  continue  it  to  the  time 
of  the  Captivity,  a  period  of  more  than  eight  cen- 
turies. Some  of  the  critics  are  incHned  to  con- 
nect them  all  together  as  successive  volumes  of 
one  great  history ;  but  there  is  not  much  founda- 
tion for  this  judgment,  and  it  is  better  to  treat 
them  separately. 

The  Book  of  Judges  contains  the  annals  of  the 
Israelites  after  the  death  of  Joshua,  and  covers  a 
period  of  three  or  four  centuries.  It  was  a  period 
of  disorder  and  turbulence,  —  the  "  Dark  Ages '* 
of  Jewish  history ;  when  every  man,  as  the  rec- 
ord often  says,  "did  that  which  was  right  in  his 
own  eyes."  There  is  frequent  mention  of  the 
keeping  of  various  observances  enjoined  in  the 
laws  of  Moses  ;  but  there  is  no  express  mention 
of  these  laws  in  the  book.  The  story  is  chiefly 
occupied  with  the  northern  tribes ;  no  mention 
is  made  of  Judah  after  the  third  chapter;  and  it 
is  largely  a  recital  of  the  various  wars  of  deliver- 
ance and  defense  waged  by  these  northern  He- 
brews against  the  surrounding  peoples,  under 
certain  leaders  who  arose,  in  a  providential  way, 
to  take  command  of  them. 

The  questions,  Who  wrote  it }  and  When  was 
it  written  }  are  not  easily  answered.  It  would 
appear  that  portions  of  it  must  have  been  written 
after  the  time  of  Saul,  for  the  phrase,  frequently 
repeated,  *'  there  was  then  no  king  in  the  land," 
looks  back  from  a  period  when  there  was  a  king 


82  l^/^O    WROTE    THE  BIBLE? 

in  the  land.  And  it  would  appear  that  the  first 
chapter  must  have  been  written  before  the  mid- 
dle of  the  reign  of  King  David  ;  for  it  tells  us 
that  the  Jebusites  had  not  yet  been  driven  out  of 
Jerusalem  ;  that  they  still  held  that  stronghold  ; 
while  in  2  Samuel  v.  6,  7,  we  are  told  of  the  ex- 
pulsion of  the  Jebusites  by  David,  who  made  the 
place  his  capital  from  that  time.  The  tradition 
that  Samuel  wrote  the  book  rests  on  no  adequate 
foundation. 

The  evidence  that  this  book  also  was  compiled, 
by  some  later  writer,  from  various  written  docu- 
ments, is  abundant  and  convincing.  There  are 
two  distinct  introductions,  one  of  which  com- 
prises the  first  chapter  and  five  verses  of  the  sec- 
ond, and  the  other  of  which  occupies  the  remain- 
der of  the  second  chapter.  The  first  of  these 
begins  thus  :  **  And  it  came  to  pass  after  the 
death  of  Joshua  that  the  children  of  Israel  asked 
of  the  Lord,  saying,  Who  shall  go  up  for  us 
against  the  Canaanites,  to  fight  against  them } " 
The  second  of  these  introductions  begins  by  tell- 
ing how  Joshua  sent  the  people  away,  after  his 
farewell  address,  and  goes  on  (ii.  8)  to  say,  "And 
Joshua  the  son  of  Nun  the  servant  of  the  Lord 
died,  being  an  hundred  and  ten  years  old."  After 
recounting  a  number  of  events  which  happened, 
as  it  tells  us,  after  the  death  of  Joshua,  the  narra- 
tive goes  on  to  give  us  as  naively  as  possible  an 
account  of  Joshua's  death.  If  this  were  a  con- 
secutive narrative  from  the  hand  of  one  writer, 


THE   EARLIER  HEBREW  HISTORIES.         83 

inspired  or  otherwise,  such  an  arrangement  would 
be  inexplicable  ;  but  if  we  have  here  a  combina- 
tion of  two  or  more  independent  documents,  the 
explanation  is  not  difficult.  It  is  a  little  puzzling, 
too,  to  find  the  circumstances  of  the  death  of 
Joshua  repeated  here,  in  almost  the  same  words 
as  those  which  we  find  in  the  Book  of  Joshua 
(xxiv.  29-31).  It  would  seem  either  that  the 
writer  of  Joshua  must  have  copied  from  Judges, 
or  the  writer  of  Judges  from  Joshua,  or  else  that 
both  copied  from  some  older  document  this  ac- 
count of  Joshua's  death. 

Another  still  more  striking  illustration  of  the 
manner  in  which  these  old  books  are  constructed 
is  found  in  the  account  given  in  the  first  chap- 
ter of  the  capture  of  Debir,  by  Caleb  (i.  11- 15). 
Here  it  is  expressly  said  that  this  capture  took 
place  after  the  death  of  Joshua,  as  a  consequence 
of  the  leadership  assigned  by  Jehovah  to  the  tribe 
of  Judah  in  this  war  against  the  Canaanites.  But 
the  same  narrative,  in  the  same  words,  is  found  in 
the  Book  of  Joshua  (xv.  15-19),  and  here  we  are 
told  no  less  explicitly  that  the  incident  happened 
during  the  lifetime  of  Joshua.  There  is  no  doubt 
that  the  incident  happened  ;  it  is  a  simple  and 
natural  story,  and  carries  the  marks  of  credibility 
upon  its  face  ;  but  if  it  happened  after  the  death 
of  Joshua  it  did  not  happen  before  his  death  ; 
one  of  these  narrators  borrowed  the  story  from 
the  other,  or  else  both  borrowed  it  from  a  com- 
mon source  ;  and  one  of  them,  certainly,  put  it 


84  ^^^O  WROTE    THE  BIBLE? 

in  the  wrong  place,  —  one  of  them  must  have 
been  mistaken  as  to  the  time  when  it  occurred. 
Such  a  mistake  is  of  no  consequence  at  all  to  one 
who  holds  a  rational  theory  of  inspiration ;  he 
expects  to  find  in  these  old  documents  just  such 
errors  and  misplacements ;  they  do  not  in  the 
least  affect  the  true  value  of  the  book  ;  but  it 
must  be  obvious  to  any  one  that  instances  of  this 
nature  cannot  be  reconciled  with  the  theory  of  an 
infallible  book,  which  has  been  generally  regarded 
as  the  only  true  theory. 

The  book  is  of  the  utmost  value  as  showing  us 
the  state  of  morals  and  manners  in  that  far-off 
time,  and  letting  us  see  with  what  crude  material 
the  great  ideas  committed  to  Israel  —  the  unity 
and  spirituality  and  righteousness  of  God  —  were 
compelled  to  work  themselves  out. 

The  Book  of  Ruth,  which  was  formerly,  in  the 
Jewish  collections,  regarded  as  a  part  of  the  Book 
of  Judges,  is  a  beautiful  pastoral  idyl  of  the  same 
period.  Its  scene  is  laid  in  Judea,  and  it  serves 
to  show  us  that  in  the  midst  of  all  those  turbu- 
lent ages  there  were  quiet  homes  and  gentle  lives. 
No  sweeter  story  can  be  found  in  any  literature ; 
maternal  tenderness,  filial  affection,  genuine  chiv- 
alry, find  in  the  book  their  typical  representa- 
tives. The  first  sentence  of  the  book  gives  us 
the  approximate  date  of  the  incidents  recorded  : 
it  was  "in  the  days  when  the  judges  judged." 
The  concluding  verses  give  us  the  genealogy  of 
King  David,  showing  that  Ruth  was  his  great- 


THE   EARLIER  HEBREW  HISTORIES.         85 

grandmother ;  it  must,  therefore,  have  been  writ- 
ten as  late  as  the  reign  of  David,  —  probably 
much  later;  for  it  describes,  as  if  they  "belonged 
to  a  remote  antiquity,  certain  usages  of  the  Jews 
which  must  needs  have  shaped  themselves  after 
the  occupation  of  Canaan.  Yet  it  could  scarcely 
have  been  written  so  late  as  the  Captivity,  for  the 
marriage  of  Ruth,  who  is  a  Moabitess,  to  Boaz,  is 
mentioned  as  if  it  were  a  matter  of  course,  with 
no  hint  of  censure.  In  the  latter  days  of  Israel 
such  an  alliance  of  a  Jew  with  a  foreigner  would 
have  been  regarded  as  highly  reprehensible.  In- 
deed the  Deuteronomic  law  most  stringently  for- 
bids all  social  relations  with  that  particular  tribe 
to  which  Ruth  belonged.  *'An  Ammonite  or  a 
IMoabite  shall  not  enter  into  the  assembly  of  the 
Lord;  even  to  the  tenth  generation  shall  none 
belonging  to  them  enter  into  the  assembly  of  the 
Lord  for  ever.  .  .  .  Thou  shalt  not  seek  their 
peace  nor  their  prosperity  all  thy  days  for  ever." 
(Deut.  xxlii.  3,  6.)  But  Ruth,  the  Moabitess,  be- 
comes the  wife  of  one  of  the  chief  men  of  Bethle- 
hem, with  the  applause  of  all  the  Bethlehemites, 
and  the  highest  approval  of  the  author  of  this 
narrative  ;  nay,  she  becomes,  in  the  fourth  gener- 
ation, the  ancestress  of  the  greatest  of  all  the 
kings  of  Israel.  This  certainly  shows  that  the 
people  of  Bethlehem  did  not  know  of  the  Deuter- 
onomic law,  for  they  were  a  God-fearing  and  a 
law-abiding  people  ;  and  it  also  makes  it  probable 
that   the   incident   occurred,  and    that   the  book 


S6  IV//0  WROTE    THE  BIBLE? 

which  describes  the  incident  was  written,  before 
this  part  of  the  Deuteronomic  code  was  in  exist- 
ence. If  is  therefore  valuable,  not  only  as  throw- 
ing light  on  the  life  of  the  people  at  that  early 
period,  but  also  as  illustrating  the  growth  of  the 
pcntateuchal  literature. 

The  two  Books  of  Samuel  and  the  two  Books  of 
Kings  appear  in  the  Septuagint  and  in  the  Latin 
Vulgate  as  one  work  in  four  volumes,  —  they  are 
called  the  Four  Books  of  Kings.  In  the  recent 
Hebrew  Bibles  they  are  divided,  however,  as  in 
our  Bible,  and  bear  the  same  names.  They  con- 
stitute, it  is  true,  a  continuous  history  ;  but  the 
supposition  that  they  were  all  written  at  one  time 
and  by  one  author  is  scarcely  credible.  The 
standpoint  of  the  writer  of  the  Kings  is  consid- 
erably shifted  from  that  occupied  by  the  writer  of 
Samuel ;  we  find  ourselves  in  a  new  circle  of  ideas 
when  we  pass  from  the  one  book  to  the  other. 

The  Books  of  Samuel  are  generally  ascribed  to 
Samuel  as  their  author.  This  is  a  fair  sample  of 
that  lazy  traditionalism  which  Christian  opinion 
has  been  constrained  to  follow.  There  is  not  the 
slightest  reason  for  believing  that  the  Books  of 
Samuel  were  written  by  Samuel  any  more  than 
that  the  Odyssey  was  written  by  Ulysses,  or  the 
<^neid  by  yEncas,  or  Bruce's  Address  by  Bruce, 
or  Paracelsus  by  Paracelsus,  or  St.  Simeon  Sty- 
lites  by  Simeon  himself.  Even  in  Bible  books 
we  do  not  hold  that  the  Book  of  Esther  was  writ- 
ten by  Esther,  or  the  Book  of  Ruth  by  Ruth,  or 


THE   EARLIER  HEBREW  HISTORIES.         8/ 

the  Book  of  Job  by  Job,  or  the  Books  of  Timothy 
by  Timothy.  The  fact  that  Samuel's  name  is 
given  to  the  book  proves  nothing  as  to  its  au- 
thorship. It  may  have  been  called  Samuel  be- 
cause it  begins  with  the  story  of  Samuel.  The 
Hebrews  were  apt  to  name  their  books  by  some 
word  or  fact  at  the  beginning  of  them,  as  we  have 
seen  in  their  naming  of  the  books  of  the  Penta- 
teuch. 

It  is  true  that  certain  facts  are  mentioned  in 
this  book  of  which  Samuel  would  have  better 
knowledge  than  any  one  else ;  and  he  is  said  to 
have  made  a  record  of  certain  events,  (i  Sam. 
X.  25.)  But  his  death  is  related  in  the  first  verse 
of  the  twenty-fifth  chapter  of  First  Samuel ;  and 
it  is  certain,  therefore,  that  considerably  more 
than  half  of  the  document  ascribed  to  him  must 
have  been  written  by  some  one  else. 

As  to  the  name  of  the  writer  we  are  wholly 
ignorant,  and  it  is  not  easy  to  determine  the  date 
at  which  he  wrote.  If  we  regarded  this  as  a  con- 
tinuous history  from  the  hand  of  one  writer,  we 
should  be  compelled  to  ascribe  it  to  a  date  some- 
what later  than  tlfe  separation  of  the  two  king- 
doms ;  for  in  i  Sam.  xxvii.  6,  we  read  of  the  pres- 
ent made  by  the  king  of  Gath  to  David  of  the 
city  of  Ziklag,  at  the  time  when  David  was  hiding 
from  Saul ;  "  wherefore,"  it  is  added,  "  Ziklag  per- 
taineth  unto  the  kings  of  Judah  even  unto  this 
day."  Now  there  were  no  "  kings  of  Judah " 
until  after  the  ten  tribes  seceded  ;  Rehoboam  was 


88  IVIIO   WROTE    THE  BIBLE? 

the  first  of  the  kings  of  Judah,  therefore  this 
must  have  been  written  after  the  time  of  Reho- 
boam.  Doubtless  this  sentence  was  written  after 
that  time  ;  and  in  all  probability  the  books  of 
Samuel  did  not  receive  their  present  form  until 
some  time  after  the  secession  of  the  ten  tribes. 
The  materials  from  which  the  writer  composed 
the  book  are  hinted  at  here  and  there ;  it  is  al- 
most certain  that  here,  as  in  the  other  books,  old 
documents  are  combined  by  the  author,  and  not 
always  with  the  best  editorial  care.  Several  old 
songs  are  quoted  :  the  "  Song  of  Hannah,"  Da- 
vid's exquisite  lament  over  Saul  and  Jonathan, 
which  is  known  as  "  The  Bow  ;  "  David's  "  Song 
of  Deliverance,"  after  he  had  escaped  from  Saul, 
which  we  find  in  the  Psalter  as  the  Eighteenth 
Psalm,  and  "  The  Last  Words  of  David."  The 
books  contain  a  vivid  narrative  of  the  times  of 
Eli  and  Samuel  and  Saul,  and  of  the  splendid 
reign  of  King  David.  No  portion  of  the  Old 
Testament  has  been  more  diligently  studied,  and 
the  moral  teaching  of  the  books  is  clear  and  lumi- 
nous. The  ethical  thoroughness  of  these  writings 
when  compared  with  almost' any  literature  of 
equal  antiquity  is  always  remarkable.  Take,  as 
an  example,  the  treatment  which  David  receives 
at  the  hands  of  the  writer.  He  is  a  great  hero, 
the  one  grand  figure  of  Hebrew  history  ;  but 
there  is  nothing  of  the  demigod  in  this  picture 
of  him  ;  his  faults  and  crimes  are  exposed  and 
denounced,  and  he  gains  our  respect  only  by  his 


THE  EARLIER  HEBREW  HISTORIES.         89 

hearty  contrition  and  amendment.  Verily  the 
God  of  Israel  whom  this  book  reveals  is  a  God 
who  loveth  righteousness  and  hateth  iniquity. 

The  Books  of  the  Kings  were  originally  one 
book,  and  ought  to  have  remained  one.  The 
manuscript  was  torn  in  two  by  some  scribe  or 
copyist  long  ago,  in  the  middle  of  the  story  of 
the  reign  of  King  Ahaziah  ;  the  first  word  of 
Second  Kings  goes  on  without  so  much  as  tak- 
ing breath,  from  the  last  word  of  First  Kings. 
There  is  no  excuse  for  this  bisection  of  the  nar- 
rative ;  it  must  be  due  to  some  accident,  or  to 
the  arbitrary  and  unintelligent  act  of  some  person 
who  paid  no  attention  to  the  meaning  of  the  doc- 
ument. As  the  Books  of  Samuel  carry  the  his- 
tory from  the  birth  of  Samuel  down  to  the  end  of 
David's  reign,  so  the  Books  of  the  Kings  take  up 
the  story  in  the  last  days  of  David  and  carry  it 
on  to  the  time  of  the  Exile,  a  period  of  four  hun- 
dred and  fifty  years.  The  name  of  the  author  is 
concealed  from  us ;  there  is  a  tradition,  not  alto- 
gether improbable,  that  it  was  written  by  the 
Prophet  Jeremiah.  If  you  will  compare  the  last 
chapter  of  Second  Kings  with  the  last  chapter  of 
Jeremiah,  you  will  discover  that  they  are  almost 
verbally  the  same.  Here,  again,  if  Jeremiah  was 
not  the  author,  either  writer  may  have  copied  the 
passage  from  the  other,  or  both  may  have  taken 
it  from  some  older  book.  But  this  passage  gives 
us  a  note  of  time.  It  tells  us  that  Evil-Merodach, 
king  of  Babylon,  in  the  first  year  of  his  reign,  re- 


90  WHO   WROTE    THE   BIBLE? 

leased  the  captive  king  of  Judah,  Jehoiachin,  from 
his  long  confinement,  and  gave  him  a  seat  at  his 
own  table.  The  book  must  have  been  v^ritten, 
then,  after  the  beginning  of  the  reign  of  Evil- 
Merodach  ;  and  there  is  plenty  of  history  to  show 
that  his  reign  began  561  B.C.  And  inasmuch  as 
the  book  gives  no  hint  of  the  return  of  the  Jews 
from  their  captivity,  which  began  in  538  b.  c,  we 
may  fairly  conclude  that  the  book  was  written 
some  time  between  those  dates.  Let  us  suppose 
that  Jeremiah  wrote  it ;  even  he,  as  prophet  of 
the  Lord,  certainly  used  the  materials  of  history 
which  had  accumulated  in  the  archives  of  the 
two  nations. 

It  is  evident  that,  after  the  establishment  of 
the  kingdom,  considerable  attention  was  paid  to 
the  preservation  of  the  records  of  important  na- 
tional events.  The  kings  kept  chroniclers  who 
not  only  preserved  and  edited  old  documents,  but 
who  wrote  the  annals  of  their  own  times.  In 
I  Kings  xi.  41,  at  the  conclusion  of  the  narrative 
of  Solomon's  reign,  we  read,  "  Now  the  rest  of 
the  acts  of  Solomon,  and  all  that  he  did,  and  his 
wisdom,  are  they  not  written  in  the  Book  of  the 
Acts  of  Solomon  } "  For  his  history  of  Jeroboam 
the  writer  refers  in  the  same  way  to  "The  Book 
of  the  Chronicles  of  the  Kings  of  Israel,"  and  for 
his  history  of  Rehoboam  to  "The  Book  of  the 
Chronicles  of  the  Kings  of  Judah."  The  same 
is  true  of  the  reigns  of  other  kings.  These  were 
not,  of  course,  our  Books  of  Chronicles,  for  these 


THE  EARLIER  HEBREW  HISTORIES.         9 1 

were  not  written  for  two  hundred  years  after  the 
Book  of  Kings  was  finished.  It  is  thus  evident, 
as  one  modern  writer  has  said,  "  that  the  author 
laboriously  employed  the  materials  within  his 
reach,  very  much  as  a  modern  historian  might 
do,  and  further  that  he  was  as  much  puzzled  by 
chronological  difficulties  as  a  modern  historian 
frequently  is."  ^  Prophet  or  not,  he  took  the 
materials  at  his  hands,  and  put  them  together 
in  this  history. 

The  splendid  but  corrupt  reign  of  the  son  of 
David  ;  the  secession  of  the  ten  tribes  under  Jer- 
oboam ;  the  hostile  relations  of  the  two  king- 
doms of  Israel  and  Judah  for  two  hundred  and 
fifty  years,  by  which  both  were  weakened,  and 
through  unholy  alliances  corrupted,  and  the  re- 
sult of  which  was  the  final  destruction  of  both, 
are  described  in  this  book  in  a  spirited  and 
evidently  veracious  manner.  The  two  great 
prophets,  Elijah  and  Elisha,  are  grand  figures 
in  this  narrative ;  much  of  the  story  revolves 
around  them.  As  witnesses  for  the  righteous 
Jehovah  they  stand  forth,  warning,  rebuking, 
counseling  kings  and  people  ;  the  moral  leader- 
ship by  which  Israel  is  chastened  and  corrected 
and  led  in  the  way  of  righteousness  expresses 
itself  largely  through  their  ministry.  The  words 
of  Lord  Arthur  Hervey,  in  Smith's  **  Bible  Dic- 
tionary," none  too  strongly  convey  the  histo- 
rian's sense  of  the  value  of  this  part  of  the  Old 
Testament : — 

1  Horton's  Inspiration  and  the  Bible,  p.  1S2. 


92  WHO   WROTE    THE   BIBLE? 

"  Considering  the  conciseness  of  the  narrative 
and  the  simplicity  of  the  style,  the  amount  of  the 
knowledge  which  these  books  convey  of  the  char- 
acters, conduct,  and  manners  of  kings  and  people 
during  so  long  a  period  is  truly  wonderful.  The 
insight  which  they  give  us  into  the  aspect  of 
Judah  and  Jerusalem,  both  natural  and  artificial, 
with  the  religious,  military,  and  civil  institutions 
of  the  people,  their  arts  and  manufactures,  the 
state  of  education  and  learning  among  them, 
their  resources,  commerce,  exploits,  alliances,  the 
causes  of  their  decadence,  and  finally  of  their 
ruin,  is  most  clear,  interesting,  and  instructive. 
In  a  few  brief  sentences  we  acquire  more  ac- 
curate knowledge  of  the  affairs  of  Egypt,  Tyre, 
Syria,  Assyria,  Babylon,  and  other  neighboring 
nations  than  had  been  preserved  to  us  in  all  the 
other  remains  of  antiquity  up  to  the  recent  dis- 
coveries in  hieroglyphical  and  cuneiform  monu- 
ments.    ^ 

The  substantial  historical  veracity  of  these 
books  has  been  confirmed  in  many  ways,  by 
these  very  monuments  to  which  Lord  Hervey 
refers.  And  yet  this  substantial  historical  ac- 
curacy is  found,  as  in  other  histories  of  the  olden 
time,  in  the  midst  of  many  minor  errors  and  dis- 
crepancies. It  would  seem  as  if  Providence  had 
taken  the  utmost  pains  to  show  us  that  the  es- 
sential truth  and  the  moral  and  religious  value 
of  this  history  could  not  be  identified  with  any 
theory  of  verbal  or  even  plenary  inspiration. 

1  Vol.  iii.  p.  1 561,  American  Edition. 


THE  EARLIER  HEBREW  HISTORIES.        93 

Take,  for  example,  some  of  the  chronological 
items  of  this  record.  Mr.  Horton's  clear  state- 
ment will  bring  a  few  of  them  before  us  :  — 

"The  author  seems  to  have  been  content,  in 
dealing  with  an  Israelite  king,  to  give  the  date 
reckoned  by  the  year  of  the  reigning  king  in 
Judah  just  as  he  found  it  stated  in  the  Israelite 
chronicles,  and  then  to  do  the  same  in  dealing 
with  the  dates  of  the  reigning  kings  of  Israel ; 
but  he  did  not  consider  whether  the  two  chroni- 
cles harmonized.  We  may  take  some  illustrations 
from  the  latter  part  of  the  work.  Hoshea  began 
to  reign  in  Israel  (2  Kings  xv.  30)  in  the  twen- 
tieth year  of  Jotham  the  king  of  Judah.  So  far 
writes  our  author,  following  the  records  of  the 
Northern  Kingdom.  For  his  next  paragraph  he 
turns  to  his  records  of  the  Southern  Kingdom, 
and  naively  tells  us  that  Jotham  never  reached 
a  twentieth  year,  but  only  reigned  sixteen  years 
(xv.  33)  ;  but  even  this  is  not  the  end  of  the  dif- 
ficulty ;  in  chapter  xvii.  he  goes  back  to  the 
Northern  Kingdom  and  tells  us  that  Hoshea  be- 
gan to  reign,  not  in  Jotham's  reign  at  all,  but  in 
the  reign  of  Ahaz,  Jotham's  successor  ;  and  if 
now  he  had  said,  *  in  the  fourth  year  of  Ahaz,' 
we  might  see  our  way  through  the  perplexity, 
for  the  fourth  year  of  Ahaz  would,  at  any  rate, 
be  twenty  years  from  the  beginning  of  Jotham's 
reign,  though  Jotham  himself  had  died  after 
reigning  sixteen  years  ;  but  he  says,  not  in  the 
fourth,  but  *  in  the  twelfth  year  of  Ahaz  king  of 


94  ^^^^O    WROTE    THE  BIBLE? 

Judah.'  We  may  give  it  up,  and  exclaim  with 
the  Speaker's  commentator,  'The  chronological 
confusion  of  the  history,  as  it  stands,  is  striking,* 
and  then  perhaps  we  may  exclaim  at  the  Speak- 
er's commentator,  that  he  and  the  like  of  him 
have  given  us  so  little  account  of  these  unmis- 
takable phenomena,  and  the  cause  of  them,  in 
the  history. 

•'  One  other  illustration  may  suffice.  King 
Ahaz,  according  to  one  authority,  lived  twenty 
years  and  then  came  to  the  throne  and  reigned 
for  sixteen  years.  (2  Kings  xvi.  2.)  At  his  death, 
therefore,  Ahaz  was  thirty-six  years  of  age.  In 
that  year  he  was  succeeded  by  his  son  Hezekiah, 
who  was  twenty-five  years  of  age.  This  would 
mean  that  King  Ahaz  was  married  at  the  age  of 
ten,  which,  making  all  allowance  for  the  earlier 
puberty  of  Eastern  boys,  does  not  seem  proba- 
ble ;  and  the  explanation  is  much  more  likely  to 
be  found  in  the  chronological  inaccuracies  of  our 
author,  to  which,  if  we  have  been  observantly 
reading  his  book  through,  we  shall  by  this  time 
have  become  quite  accustomed."  ^ 

Observe  that  we  are  not  going  to  any  hostile  or 
foreign  sources  for  these  evidences  of  inaccuracy  ; 
we  are  simply  letting  the  book  tell  its  own  story. 
Such  phenomena  as  these  appear  throughout  this 
history.  They  lie  upon  the  very  face  of  the  nar- 
rative. Probably  few  of  the  readers  of  these 
pages  have  noted  them.     For  myself,  I  must  con- 

1  Inspiration  and  the  Bible,  pp.  189-191. 


THE   EARLIER   HEBREW  HISTORIES.         95 

fess  that  I  read  the  Bible  through,  from  cover  to 
cover,  several  times  before  I  was  thirty  years  old, 
but  I  had  never  observed  these  inaccuracies.  The 
commentators,  for  the  most  part,  —  the  orthodox 
commentators,  — carefully  keep  these  facts  out  of 
sight.  Sometimes  they  attempt,  indeed,  to  ex- 
plain or  reconcile  them,  but  such  explanations 
generally  increase  the  incredibility  of  the  narra- 
tive. The  latest  verdict  of  ultra-conservatism  is 
that  these  dates  and  chronological  notes  are  inter- 
polated by  some  later  hand  ;  but  this,  too,  is  quite 
out  of  the  question.  The  only  true  account  of 
the  matter  is,  that  the  author  took  these  records 
from  the  Chronicles  of  the  Kings  of  Judah  and 
the  Chronicles  of  the  Kings  of  Israel,  and  pieced 
them  together  without  noticing  or  caring  whether 
they  agreed.  His  mind  was  not  fixed  upon  sci- 
entific accuracy  of  dates.  He  was  thinking  only 
of  the  great  ethical  and  spiritual  problems  work- 
ing themselves  out  in  this  history,  —  of  the  ques- 
tion whether  or  not  these  kings  "did  that  which 
was  right  in  the  sight  of  the  Lord,"  and  of  the 
effects  of  their  right  doing  and  their  evil  doing 
upon  the  lives  of  the  people.  What  difference, 
indeed,  does  it  make  to  you  and  me  whether  Jo- 
tham  reigned  sixteen  years  or  twenty  years  }  It 
seems  to  me  that  these  inaccuracies  are  suffered 
to  lie  upon  the  face  of  the  narrative  that  our 
thoughts  may  be  turned  away  from  these  details 
of  the  record  to  the  great  principles  of  morality 
and  religion  whose  development  it  reveals  to  us. 


96  ll'JJO    WKOTJ:     'JIJK   BIHLK'f 

These  errors  which  appear  upon   the   surface 
are  obvious  enough  to  any  careful  reader.     But 
other  facts,  most  important  and  suggestive,  are 
brought  to  light  when  we  compare  these  narra- 
tives of   Samuel  and  Kings  as  we  find  them  in 
the  Hebrew  text  with  the  same  narrative  in  the 
Greek  text,  the  Septuagint.    The  Old  Testament, 
as  we  have  seen,  was  translated  into  the  Greek 
language,  for  the  benefit  of  those  Jews  who  spoke 
only   Greek,   early   in    the   third    century  before 
Christ.     Undoubtedly    it    was    a    pretty   faithful 
translation  at  the  time  when  it  was  made.     But 
a   careful   comparison   of  the  two   texts  as   they 
exist  at  the  present  time  shows  that  considerable 
additions  have  been  made  to  both  of  them  ;  and 
that  some  changes  and  misplacements  have  oc- 
curred in  both  of  them.      Sometimes  it  is  evident 
that  the  Hebrew  is  the  more  correct,  because  the 
story  is  more  orderly  and  consistent  ;  and  some- 
times it  is  equally  evident  that  the  Greek  version, 
which,  as  you  remember,  was  commonly  used  by 
our  Lord  and  his  apostles,  is  the  better.     This 
comparison  gives  us  a  vivid  and  convincing  illus- 
tration of  the  freedom  with  which  the  text  was 
handled  by  scribes  and  copyists  ;  how  bits  of  nar- 
rative —  most    commonly  legends    and    popular 
tales  concerning  the  heroes  of  the  nation  —  were 
thrust   into  the   text,   sometimes   quite   breaking 
its  continuity  ;  they  make  it  plain  that  that  pre- 
ternatural supervision  of  it,  for  the  prevention  of 
error,  which  we  have  frequently  heard  about,  is 


y •///•;   I'.ARIJKR   HEBREW  lU STORIES.         97 

itself  a  myth.  It  is  in  these  books  of  Samuel 
and  the  Kings  that  these  variations  of  the  Sep- 
tuagint  from  the  Hebrew  text  are  most  frequent 
and  most  instructive. 

In  the  story  of  David's  introduction  to  Saul, 
for  example,  our  version,  following  the  Hebrew, 
tells  us  (i  Sam.  xvi.  14-23),  that  when  David  was 
first  made  known  to  Saul  he  was  **a  mighty  man 
of  valor,  and  a  man  of  war,  and  prudent  in  speech, 
and  a  comely  person."  He  comes  into  Saul's 
household  ;  Saul  loves  him  greatly,  and  makes 
him  his  armor-bearer.  In  the  next  chapter  David 
is  represented  as  a  mere  lad,  and  it  appears  that 
Saul  had  never  seen  or  heard  of  him.  Indeed, 
he  asks  his  general,  Abner,  who  this  stripling  is. 
The  contradiction  in  these  narratives  is  palpable 
and  irreconcilable.  When  we  turn  now  to  the 
Septuagint,  we  find  that  it  omits  from  the  seven- 
teenth chapter  verses  12-31  inclusive  ;  also  from 
the  55th  verse  to  the  end  of  the  chapter  and  the 
first  five  verses  of  the  next  chapter.  Taking  out 
these  passages,  the  main  difficulties  of  the  narra- 
tive are  at  once  removed.  It  appears  probable 
that  these  passages  were  not  in  the  narrative 
when  it  was  translated  into  Greek,  but  that  they 
embodied  a  current  and  a  very  beautiful  tradi- 
tion about  David  which  some  later  Hebrew  tran- 
scriber ventured  to  incorporate  into  the  text. 

In  the  Books  of  the  Kings  the  variations  be- 
tween these  two  versions  are  also  extremely  sug- 
gestive.    You   can   see  distinctly,  as   if   it   were 


98  iVJ/O    WROTE    THE   BIBLE? 

done  before  your  eyes,  how  supplementary  mat- 
ter has  been  inserted  into  the  one  text  or  the 
other,  since  the  Greek  translation  was  made.  In 
the  sixth  chapter  of  First  Kings,  the  Septuagint 
omits  verses  11-14,  which  is  an  exhortation  to 
Solomon,  injected  into  the  specifications  respect- 
ing the  temple  building.  Omit  these  verses,  and 
the  description  goes  on  smoothly.  Similarly  in 
the  ninth  chapter  of  the  same  book  the  Septua- 
gint omits  verses  15-25.  This  passage  breaks 
the  connection  ;  the  narrative  of  Solomon's  deal- 
ings with  Hiram  is  consecutively  told  in  the 
Greek  version  ;  in  the  Hebrew  it  is  interrupted 
by  this  extraneous  matter.  You  can  readily  see 
which  is  the  original  form  of  the  writing. 

Now  what  does  all  this  signify  .''  Of  course  it 
signifies  most  distinctly  that  this  history  must 
not  be  judged  by  the  canons  of  modern  historical 
criticism.  Mr.  Horton  quotes  some  strenuous 
advocate  of  the  traditional  theory  of  the  Bible  as 
maintaining  that  ''when  God  writes  history  he 
will  be  at  least  as  accurate  as  Bishop  Stubbs  or 
Mr.  Gardiner ;  and  if  we  are  to  admit  errors  in 
his  historical  work,  then  why  not  in  his  plan  of 
salvation  and  doctrine  of  atonement  ? "  It  is  this 
kind  of  reasoning  that  drives  intelligent  men  into 
infidelity.  For  the  errors  are  here  ;  they  speak 
for  themselves  ;  nothing  but  a  mole-eyed  dog- 
matism can  evade  them  ;  and  if  we  link  the  great 
doctrines  of  the  Bible  with  this  dogma  of  the  his- 
torical inerrancy  of  the  Scriptures,  they  will  all 
go  down  together. 


THE   EARLIER  HEBREW  HISTORIES.         99 

But  what,  after  all,  do  these  errors  amount  to  ? 
What  is  the  meaning  and  purport  of  this  history  ? 
What  are  these  writers  trying  to  do  ?  "  It  seems," 
says  Mr.  Horton,  **  as  if  their  purpose  was  not  so 
much  to  tell  us  what  happened  as  to  emphasize 
for  us  the  lesson  of  what  happened.  It  is  applied 
history,  rather  than  history  pure  and  simple  ;  and 
on  this  ground  we  can  understand  the  tendency 
to  irritation  which  critical  historians  sometimes 
betray  in  approaching  it.  .  .  .  The  prophetic  his- 
torian would  never  dream,  like  a  modern  his- 
torian, of  writing  interminable  monographs  about 
a  disputed  name  or  a  doubtful  date  ;  he  might 
even  take  a  story  which  rested  on  very  doubtful 
authority,  finding  in  it  more  that  would  suit  his 
purpose  than  the  bare  and  accurate  statement  of 
the  fact  which  could  be  authenticated.  The 
standpoint  of  the  prophetic  historian  and  of  the 
scientific  historian  are  wholly  different  ;  they  can- 
not be  judged  by  the  same  canons  of  criticism. 
.  .  .  To  the  prophetic  eye  the  significance  of  all 
events  seems  to  be  in  their  relation  to  the  will  of 
God.  The  prophet  may  not  always  discern  what 
the  will  of  God  is  ;  he  may  interpret  events  in  a 
quite  inadequate  manner.  But  his  predominant 
thought  makes  itself  felt ;  and  consequently  the 
study  of  these  histories  leaves  us  in  a  widely  dif- 
ferent frame  of  mind  from  that  which  Thucy- 
dides  or  Mr.  Freeman  would  produce.  We  do 
not  feel  to  know,  perhaps,  so  accurately  about  the 
wars  between  Israel  and  Judah  as  we  know  about 


100  U7/0    WROTE    THE   lUHI.E? 

the  wars  between  Athens  and  Sparta  ;  we  do  not 
feel  to  know,  perhaps,  so  much  about  the  mon- 
archy of  Israel  as  we  know  about  the  Anglo- 
Norman  monarchy  ;  but,  on  the  other  hand,  we 
seem  to  be  more  aware  of  God,  we  seem  to  rec- 
ognize his  hand  controlling  the  wavering  affairs 
of  states,  we  seem  to  comprehend  that  obedience 
to  his  will  is  of  more  importance  than  any  polit- 
ical consideration,  and  that  in  the  long  course  of 
history  disobedience  to  his  will  means  national 
distress  and  national  ruin.  The  study  of  scien- 
tific histories  has  its  advantages  ;  but  it  is  not 
quite  certain  that  these  advantages  are  greater 
than  those  which  the  study  of  prophetic  history 
yields.  Perhaps,  after  all,  the  one  fact  of  his- 
tory is  God's  work  in  it  ;  in  which  case  the  scien- 
tific histories,  with  all  their  learning,  with  all 
their  toil,  will  look  rather  small  by  the  side  of 
these  imperfect  compositions  which  at  least  saw 
vividly  and  recognized  faithfully  the  one  fact.'* 


CHAPTER  V. 

THE   HEBREW    PROPHECIES. 

In  the  last  chapter  the  opinion  was  expressed 
that  the  first  books  collected  by  Nehemiah,  when 
he  made  up  his  "library,"  a  century  after  the  Ex- 
ile, were  the  writings  of  the  prophets.  We  stud- 
ied the  historical  books  first,  because  they  stand 
first  in  the  Hebrew  Bible,  and  are  there  named 
the  ''  Earlier  Prophets  ;  "  but  the  probabilities  are 
that  the  prophetical  writings  proper,  called  by  the 
Jews  the  "  Later  Prophets,"  were  first  gathered. 

When  was  this  collection  made  ?  If  it  was 
made  by  Nehemiah  (and  there  is  nothing  to  dis- 
credit the  statement  of  the  author  of  2  Macca- 
bees that  he  was  the  collector),  then  it  was  not 
compiled  until  one  hundred  years  after  the  Exile, 
or  only  about  four  hundred  and  twenty  years  be- 
fore Christ.  Most  of  the  prophets  had  written 
before  or  during  the  Exile.  Joel,  Hosea,  and 
Amos  had  flourished  three  or  four  hundred  years 
before  this  collection  was  made  ;  Isaiah,  the  great- 
est of  them  all,  had  been  in  his  grave  almost 
three  centuries  ;  Micah,  nearly  as  long ;  Nahum, 
Habakkuk,  and  Zephaniah  had  been  silent  from 
one  to  two  hundred  years  ;    Jeremiah,  who  was 


102  IV/IO    WROTE    THE   BIBLE? 

alive  when  the  seventy  years*  captivity  began,  and 
Ezekiel,  who  prophesied  and  perished  among  the 
captives  on  the  banks  of  the  Euphrates,  were 
more  remote  from  Nehemiah  than  Samuel  John- 
son and  Jonathan  Edwards  are  from  us ;  even 
Haggai  and  Zcchariah,  who  came  back  with  the 
returning  exiles  and  helped  to  build  the  second 
temple,  had  passed  away  from  fifty  to  one  hun- 
dred years  before  the  time  of  Nehemiah.  Mala- 
chi  alone,  —  "  The  Messenger,"  —  and  the  last  of 
the  prophets,  may  have  been  alive  when  the  com- 
pilation of -the  prophetic  writings  was  made. 

It  may  be  safely  conjectured  that  the  Jews,  al- 
though they  had  never  possessed  any  collection 
of  the  books  of  the  prophets,  had  known  some- 
thing of  their  contents.  Several  of  the  prophets 
had  foretold  the  desolation  and  the  captivity,  and 
there  had  been  abundant  time  during  the  Exile 
to  recall  the  words  they  had  spoken  and  to  wish 
that  their  fathers  had  heeded  them.  These  re- 
membered words  of  the  prophets,  passing  from 
lip  to  lip,  would  thus  have  acquired  peculiar  sa- 
credness.  It  seems  clear,  also,  that  copies  of 
these  books  must  have  been  kept, — perhaps  in 
the  schools  of  the  prophets  ;  for  the  later  pro- 
phets quote,  verbally,  from  the  earlier  ones.  It 
may,  therefore,  have  been  in  response  to  a  popu- 
lar wish  that  this  collection  of  their  writings  was 
undertaken.  Words  so  momentous  as  these  ought 
to  be  sacredly  treasured.  Furthermore,  there 
were  reasons  to  apprehend  that  the  holy  flame  of 


THE  HEBREW  PROPHECIES.  103 

prophecy  was  dying  out.  Malachi  may  have  been 
speaking  still,  but  there  was  not  much  promise 
that  he  would  have  a  successor,  and  the  expecta- 
tion of  prophetic  voices  was  growing  dim  among 
the  people. 

The  Levitical  ritual,  now  so  elaborate  and  cum- 
bersome, had  supplanted  the  prophetic  oracle. 
The  ritualist  is  never  a  prophet ;  and  out  of  such 
a  formal  cult  no  words  of  inspiration  are  apt  to 
flow.  With  all  the  greater  carefulness,  therefore, 
would  the  people  treasure  the  messages  that  had 
come  to  them  from  the  past.  Accordingly  these 
prophetic  writings,  which  had  existed  in  a  frag- 
mentary and  scattered  form,  were  gathered  into 
a  collection  by  themselves. 

It  must  be  admitted  that  when  we  try  to  tell 
how  these  writings  had  been  preserved  and  trans- 
mitted through  all  these  centuries,  we  have  but 
little  solid  ground  of  fact  to  go  upon.  The  Scrip- 
tures themselves  are  entirely  silent  with  respect 
to  the  manner  of  their  preservation  ;  the  tradi- 
tions of  the  Jews  are  wholly  worthless.  We  must 
not  imagine  that  these  books  of  Isaiah  and  Jere- 
miah and  Hosea  were  written  and  published  as 
our  books  are  written  and  published  ;  there  was 
no  book  trade  then  through  which  literature  could 
be  marketed,  and  no  subscription  agencies  hawk- 
ing books  from  door  to  door.  You  must  not  im- 
agine that  every  family  in  Judea  had  a  copy  of 
Isaiah's  Works,  —  nor  even  that  a  copy  could  be 
found  in  every  village  ;  it  is  possible  that  there 


104  ^^'^^^    WROTE    THE  BIBLE? 

were  not,  when  the  people  were  carried  into  cap- 
tivity, more  than  a  few  dozen  copies  of  these 
prophecies  in  existence,  and  these  were  in  the 
hands  of  some  of  the  prophets  or  literary  dignita- 
ries of  the  nation,  or  in  the  archives  of  some  of 
the  prophetical  schools.  The  notion  that  these 
works  were  distributed  among  the  people  for 
study  and  devotional  reading  is  not  to  be  enter- 
tained. No  such  general  use  of  the  prophetical 
writings  was  ever  conceived  of  by  the  Jews  be- 
fore the  Captivity. 

Indeed,  many  of  these  prophecies,  as  we  call 
them,  were  not,  primarily,  literature  at  all.  They 
were  sermons  or  addresses,  delivered  orally  to 
the  individuals  concerned,  or  to  assemblies  of  the 
people.  You  can  see  the  evidence,  in  many  cases, 
that  they  must  have  been  thus  delivered. 

We  speak  of  the  "prophecy"  of  Isaiah, 'or  the 
"prophecy"  of  Jeremiah;  but  the  books  bearing 
their  names  are  made  up  of  a  number  of  "pro- 
phecies," uttered  on  various  occasions.  The  divi- 
sion between  these  separate  prophecies  is  gener- 
ally indicated  by  the  language  ;  in  all  Paragraph 
Bibles  it  is  marked  by  blank  lines.  In  each  of 
these  earlier  prophetical  books  we  thus  have,  in 
all  probability,  a  succession  of  deliverances,  ex- 
tending through  long  periods  of  time  and  pre- 
pared for  various  occasions. 

After  the  oracle  was  spoken  to  those  for  whom 
it  was  designed,  it  was  written  down  by  the  pro- 
phet or  by  his  friends  and  disciples,  and  thus  pre- 


THE   HEBREW  PROPHECIES.  105 

served.  This  supposition  seems,  at  any  rate, 
more  plausible  than  any  other  that  I  have  found. 
Manifestly  many  of  these  prophecies  were  origi- 
nally sermons  or  public  addresses ;  it  is  natural  to 
suppose  that  they  were  first  delivered,  and  then, 
for  substance,  reduced  to  writing,  that  a  record 
might  be  made  of  the  utterance. 

It  is  sometimes  alleged  that  these  prophecies, 
as  soon  as  they  were  produced,  were  at  once 
added  to  a  collection  of  sacred  Scriptures  which 
was  preserved  in  the  sanctuary.  There  was  a 
"Book"  or  "  Scripture,"  it  is  said,  "which  from 
the  time  of  Moses  was  kept  open,  and  in  which 
the  writings  of  the  prophets  may  have  been  re- 
corded as  they  were  produced."  ^ 

The  learned  divine  who  ventures  this  conjec- 
ture admits  that  it  would  be  as  hard  to  prove  it  as 
to  disprove  it.  My  own  opinion  is  that  it  would 
be  much  harder.  If  there  had  been  any  such  of- 
ficial receptacle  of  sacred  writings,  the  prophets 
were  not  generally  in  a  position  to  secure  the  ad- 
mission of  their  documents  into  it.  They  were 
often  in  open  controversy  with  the  people  who 
kept  the  sanctuary ;  the  political  and  the  reli- 
gious authorities  of  the  nation  were  the  objects 
of  their  severest  denunciations  ;  it  is  not  likely 
that  the  priests  would  make  haste  to  transcribe 
and  preserve  in  the  sanctuary  the  sermons  and 
lectures  of  the  men  who  were  scourging  them 
with  censure.     This  national  bibliotJieca  sacra  in 

^  Alexander  on  Isaiah,  i.  7. 


I06  IVI/O    WROTE   THE   BIBLE? 

which  the  writings  of  the  prophets  were  depos- 
ited as  soon  as  they  were  composed  is  the  pro- 
duct of  pure  fiction.  It  was  not  thus  that  the 
prophetical  utterances  were  preserved  ;  rather  is 
it  to  be  supposed  that  the  pupils  and  friends  of 
the  prophet  faithfully  kept  his  manuscripts  after 
he  was  gone  ;  that  occasional  copies  were  made 
of  them  by  those  who  wished  to  study  them,  and 
that  thus  they  were  handed  down  from  genera- 
tion to  generation. 

When  Nehemiah  made  his  collection  he  found 
these  manuscripts,  in  whose  hands  we  know  not, 
and  brought  them  together  in  one  place.  We 
may  presume  that  the  writings  of  each  prophet 
were  copied  upon  a  separate  roll,  and  that  the 
rolls  were  kept  together  in  some  receptacle  in 
the  temple.  Most  of  these  prophets  had  now 
been  dead  some  hundreds  of  years ;  the  truth  of 
their  messages  was  no  longer  disputed  even  by 
the  priests  and  the  scribes ;  their  heresy  was  now 
the  soundest  orthodoxy ;  the  custodians  of  ortho- 
doxy would  of  course  now  make  a  place  for  their 
writings  in  the  national  archives.  The  priests 
have  always  been  ready  to  build  sepulchres  for 
the  prophets  after  they  were  dead,  and  to  pay 
them  plenty  oi  post  mortem  reverence. 

The  books  of  the  prophets  stand  in  the  later 
Hebrew  Bibles  in  the  same  order  as  that  in  which 
they  are  placed  in  our  own  ;  th'ey  occupy  a  differ- 
ent place  in  the  whole  collection  :  they  are  in  the 
middle  of  the  Hebrew  Bible,  and  they  are  at  the 


THE  HEBREW  PROPHECIES.  107 

end  of  ours  ;  but  their  relation  to  one  another  is 
the  same  in  both  Bibles.  This  order  is  not  chron- 
ological ;  in  part,  at  least,  it  seems  to  represent 
what  was  supposed  to  be  the  relative  importance 
of  the  books.  Isaiah,  Jeremiah,  and  Ezekiel  are 
placed  first,  perhaps  because  they  are  longest,  al- 
though several  of  the  minor  prophets  are  of  ear- 
lier date  than  they.  "  Daniel  "  is  not  among  the 
prophets  in  the  Hebrew  Bible ;  the  book  which 
bears  this  name  is  one  of  the  books  of  the  third 
collection, —  the  Hagiographa,  —  of  which  we  shall 
speak  at  another  time. 

"When  we  follow  further  the  same  collection," 
says  Professor  Murray,  "  we  find  Hosea  immedi- 
ately following  Ezekiel  [although  Hosea  lived 
more  than  two  centuries  before  Ezekiel]  and  in 
turn  followed  by  Joel  and  Amos,  mainly  on  the 
principle  of  comparative  bulk.  Haggai,  Zecha- 
riah,  and  Malachi  were  placed  at  the  end  for  rea- 
sons purely  chronological,  after  the  rest  of  the 
collection  had  been  made  up.  We  cannot  see 
any  clear  or  consistent  reason  for  the  position  of 
Obadiah,  Jonah,  Micah,  Nahum,  Habakkuk,  and 
Zephaniah,  which  stand  together  in  the  middle  of 
the  collection." 

An  examination  of  the  chronological  notes  on 
the  margin  of  our  English  Bibles  (which  are  not 
always  correct  though  they  are  approximately  so) 
will  show  that  these  prophetical  books  are  not  ar- 
ranged in  the  order  of  time.  It  would  be  a  great 
improvement  to  have  them  so  arranged.     Pupils 


I08  WI/O    WROTE    TIIK  HIBLE? 

in  the  Sunday-schools  who  attempted  a  few  years 
ago  to  follow  the  "  International  "  lessons  through 
these  prophecies,  seriatiniy  found  themselves  skip- 
ping back  and  forward  over  the  centuries  in  a 
history-defying  dance  which  was  quite  bewilder- 
ing to  all  but  the  clearest  heads.  We  could  un- 
derstand these  prophecies  much  better  if  they 
were  arranged  in  the  order  of  their  dates.  And 
as  no  one  supposes  that  the  present  arrangement, 
made  by  Jewish  scribes,  is  in  any  wise  inspired, 
there  seems  to  be  no  good  reason  why  the  late 
revisers  might  not  have  altered  it,  and  set  these 
books  in  a  historical  and  intelligible  order. 

Who  were  these  prophets  and  what  was  their 
function  .''  To  give  any  adequate  answer  to  this 
inquiry  would  require  a  treatise  ;  it  is  only  in  the 
most  cursory  manner  that  we  can  deal  with  it  in 
this  place. 

The  prophet  is  the  man  who  speaks  for  God. 
He  is  the  interpreter  of  the  divine  will.  By  some 
means  he  has  come  to  understand  God's  purpose, 
and  his  function  is  to  declare  it.  Thus  in  .Exo- 
dus iv.  1 6,  Jehovah  says  to  Moses,  ''Aaron  thy 
brother  .  .  .  shall  be  thy  spokesman  unto  the 
people,  and  it  shall  come  to  pass  that  he  shall  be 
to  thee  a  mouth  and  thou  shalt  be  to  him  as 
God."  And  again  (vii.  i),  "  See,  I  have  made 
thee  a  god  to  Pharaoh,  and  Aaron  thy  brother 
shall  be  thy  prophet."  These  passages  indicate 
the  Biblical  meaning  of  the  word.  The  prophet 
is  the  spokesman  or  interpreter  of  some  superior 


THE   HEBREW  PROPHECIES.  109 

authority.  In  Classic  Greek,  also,  Apollo  is  called 
the  prophet  of  Jupiter,  and  the  Pythia  is  the  pro- 
phetess of  Apollo.  Almost  universally,  in  the 
Old  Testapient,  the  word  is  used  to  signify  an  ex- 
pounder or  interpreter  of  the  divine  will. 

"The  English  words  'prophet,  prophecy,  pro- 
phesying,'" says  Dean  Stanley,  "originally  kept 
tolerably  close  to  the  Biblical  use  of  the  word. 
The  celebrated  dispute  about 'prophesyings '  in 
the  sense  of  'preachings'  in  the  reign  of  Eliza- 
beth, and  the  treatise  of  Jeremy  Taylor  on  'The 
Liberty  of  Prophesying,'  i.  e.y  the  liberty  of 
preaching,  show  that  even  down  to  the  seven- 
teenth century  the  word  was  still  used  as  in  the 
Bible,  for  preaching  or  speaking  according  to  the 
will  of  God.  In  the  seventeenth  century,  how- 
ever, the  limitation  of  the  word  to  the  sense  of 
prediction  had  gradually  begun  to  appear.  This 
secondary  meaning  of  the  word  had  by  the  time 
of  Dr.  Johnson  so  entirely  superseded  the  origi- 
nal Scriptural  signification  that  he  gives  no  other 
special  definition  of  it  than  'to  predict,  to  fore- 
tell, to  prognosticate,'  'a  predicter,  a  foreteller,' 
*  foreseeing  or  foretelling  future  events  ; '  and  in 
this  sense  it  has  been  used  almost  down  to  our 
own  day,  when  the  revival  of  Biblical  criticism 
has  resuscitated,  in  some  measure,  the  Biblical 
use  of  the  word."  ^  The  predictive  function  of 
the  prophet  is  not,  then,  the  only,  nor  the  promi- 
nent feature  of  his  work.     By  far  the  larger  por- 

1  History  of  the  jfewish  Church,  i.  459,  460. 


no  WHO    WROTE    THE  BIBLE? 

tion  of  the  prophetic  utterances  were  concerned 
with  the  present,  and  made  no  reference  to  the 
future. 

The  prophet  exercised  his  office  in  many  ways. 
Moses  was  a  prophet,  the  first  and  greatest  of 
the  prophets  ;  but  we  have  from  him  few  predic- 
tions ;  he  interpreted  the  will  of  God  in  the  en- 
actment of  laws.  Samuel  was  a  great  prophet ; 
but  Samuel  was  not  employed  in  foretelling  fu- 
ture events  ;  he  sought  to  know  the  will  of  God, 
that  he  might  administer  the  affairs  of  the  Jew- 
ish commonwealth  in  accordance  with  it.  Elijah 
and  Elisha  were  great  prophets,  but  they  were 
not  prognosticators  ;  they  were  preachers  of  right- 
eousness to  kings  and  people,  and  they  delivered 
their  message  in  a  way  to  make  the  ears  of  those 
who  heard  them  to  tingle.  And  this,  for  all  the 
prophets  who  succeeded  them,  was  the  one  great 
business.  The  ethical  function  of  these  men  of 
God  came  more  and  more  distinctly  into  view. 

When  Paul  admonished  Timothy  (2  Tim.  iv.  2) 
to  "  preach  the  word  ;  be  instant  in  season,  out 
of  season  ;  reprove,  rebuke,  exhort  with  all  long- 
suffering  and  teaching,"  he  was  calling  on  him 
to  be  a  follower  of  the  prophets.  When  kings 
became  profligate  and  faithless,  when  priests 
grew  formal  and  greedy,  when  the  rich  waxed 
extortionate  and  tyrannical,  these  men  of  God 
arose  to  denounce  the  transgressors  and  threaten 
them  with  the  divine  vengeance.  They  might 
arise  in  any  quarter,  from  any  class.     They  were 


THE  HEBREW  PROPHECIES.  ill 

confined  to  no  tribe,  to  no  locality,  to  no  calling. 
Neither  sex  monopolized  this  gift.  Miriam,  Deb- 
orah, Huldah  were  shining  names  upon  their  roll 
of  honor.  To  no  ecclcsiasticism  or  officialism  did 
they  owe  their  authority  ;  no  man's  hands  had 
been  laid  upon  them  in  ordination  ;  they  were 
Jehovah's  messengers  ;  from  him  alone  they  re- 
ceived their  messages,  to  him  alone  they  held 
themselves  responsible. 

No  such  preachers  of  politics  ever  existed  as 
these  Hebrew  prophets  ;  with  all  the  affairs  of 
state  they  constantly  intermeddled  ;  bad  laws  and 
unholy  policies  found  in  them  sharp  and  unspar- 
ing critics  ;  the  entangling  alliances  of  Israel  with 
the  surrounding  nations  were  denounced  by  them 
in  season  and  out  of  season.  The  people  of  their 
own  time  often  stigmatized  them  as  unpatriotic ; 
because  they  would  not  approve  popular  iniqui- 
ties, or  refrain  their  lips  from  rebuking  even 
**  favorite  sons,"  or  the  idols  of  the  populace,  they 
often  found  themselves  under  the  ban  of  public 
opinion  ;  they  lived  lonely  lives  ;  not  a  few  of 
them  died  violent  deaths.  **  Which  of  the  pro- 
phets did  not  your  fathers  persecute  1 "  demanded 
Stephen,  **  and  they  killed  them  which  showed 
before  of  the  coming  of  the  Righteous  One ;  of 
whom  ye  have  now  become  betrayers  and  mur- 
derers." ^ 

The  relation  of  the  prophets  to  the  political 
life   of   the  Jewish   people   is   brought   out   in   a 

^  Acts  vii.  52. 


112  WHO    WROTE    THE  BIBLE? 

Striking  way  by  John  Stuart  Mill  in  his  book  on 
"  Representative  Government."  In  that  chap- 
ter in  which  he  discusses  the  criterion  of  a  good 
government,  he  shows  how  the  Egyptian  hier- 
archy and  the  Chinese  paternal  despotism  de- 
stroyed those  countries  by  stereotyping  their 
institutions.     Then  he  goes  on  :  — 

**  In  contrast  with  these  nations  let  us  consider 
the  example  of  an  opposite  character,  afforded 
by  another  and  a  comparatively  insignificant  Ori- 
ental people,  the  Jews.  They,  too,  had  an  abso- 
lute monarchy  and  a  hierarchy,  and  their  organ- 
ized institutions  were  as  obviously  of  sacerdotal 
origin  as  those  of  the  Hindoos.  These  did  for 
them  what  was  done  for  other  Oriental  races  by 
their  institutions,  subdued  them  to  industry  and 
order,  and  gave  them  a  national  life.  But  neither 
their  kings  nor  their  priests  ever  obtained,  as  in 
those  other  countries,  the  exclusive  moulding  of 
their  character.  Their  religion,  which  enabled 
persons  of  genius  and  a  high  religious  tone  to 
be  regarded  and  to  regard  themselves  as  inspired 
from  heaven,  gave  existence  to  an  inestimably 
preciou^  unorganized  institution,  —  the  Order 
(if  it  may  be  so  termed)  of  Prophets.  Under  the 
protection,  generally  though  not  always  effectual, 
of  their  sacred  character,  the  Prophets  were  a 
power  in  the  nation,  often  more  than  a  match 
for  kings  and  priests,  and  kept  up  in  that  little 
corner  of  the  earth  the  antagonism  of  influences 
which   is    the   only  real    security   for  continued 


THE   HEBREW  PROPHECIES.  113 

progress.  Religion,  consequently,  was  not  then 
what  it  has  been  in  so  many  other  places,  a  con- 
secration of  all  that  was  once  established,  and  a 
barrier  against  further  improvement.  The  re- 
mark of  a  distinguished  Hebrew,  M.  Salvador, 
that  the  Prophets  were  in  church  and  state  the 
equivalent  of  the  modern  liberty  of  the  press, 
gives  a  just  but  not  an  adequate  conception  of 
the  part  fulfilled  in  national  and  universal  history 
by  this  great  element  of  Jewish  life  ;  by  means 
of  which,  the  canon  of  inspiration  never  being 
complete,  the  persons  mxost  eminent  in  genius 
and  moral  feelins:  could  not  onlv  denounce  and 
reprobate,  with  the  direct  authority  of  the  Al- 
mighty, whatever  appeared  to  them  deserving  of 
such  treatment,  but  could  give  forth  better  and 
higher  interpretations  of  the  national  religion, 
which  thenceforth  became  part  of  the  religion. 
Accordindv,  whoever  can  divest  himself  of  the 
habit  of  reading  the  Bible  as  if  it  was  one  book, 
which  until  lately  was  equally  inveterate  in 
Christians  and  unbelievers,  sees  with  admira- 
tion the  vast  interval  between  the  morality  and 
religion  of  the  Pentateuch,  or  even  of  the  histor- 
ical books  (the  unmistakable  work  of  Hebrew 
Conservatives  of  the  Sacerdotal  order),  and  the 
morality  and  religion  of  the  Prophecies.  Condi- 
tions more  favorable  to  progress  could  not  easily 
exist ;  accordingly,  the  Jews,  instead  of  being 
stationary  like  other  Asiatics,  were,  next  to  the 
Greeks,  the  most  progressive  people  of  antiquity, 


114  ^^^^^    WROTE    THE  BIBLE  f 

and,  joint  with  them,  have  been  the  starting- 
point  and  main  propelling  agency  of  modern  civ- 
ilization." ^ 

Not  only  in  the  sphere  of  politics,  but  in  that 
of  religion  also,  were  they  constantly  appearing 
as  critics  and  censors.  The  tendency  of  religion 
to  become  merely  ritual,  to  divorce  itself  from 
righteousness,  is  inveterate.  Against  this  ten- 
dency the  prophets  were  the  constant  witnesses. 
The  religious  "  machine  "  is  always  in  the  same 
danger  of  becoming  corrupt  and  mischievous  as 
is  the  political  *'  machine  ; "  the  man  with  the 
sledge-hammer  who  will  smash  it  and  fling  it  into 
the  junk-pile  has  a  work  to  do  in  every  genera- 
tion. This  was  the  work  of  the  Hebrew  prophets. 
"  I  desired  mercy,  and  not  sacrifice,"  cries  Ro- 
sea, speaking  for  Jehovah.  **  I  hate,  I  despise 
your  feast  days,"  says  Amos,  "  and  I  will  not 
smell  in  your  solemn  assemblies,  .  .  .  but  let  judg- 
ment run  down  as  waters,  and  righteousness  as 
a  mighty  stream."  "Your  new  moons  and  your 
appointed  feasts  my  soul  hateth,"  proclaims  Isa- 
iah ;  "  they  are  a  trouble  unto  me ;  I  am  weary 
to  bear  them.  Wash  ye,  make  you  clean  ;  cease 
to  do  evil ;  learn  to  do  well.  Is  not  this  the  fast 
that  I  have  chosen,  to  loose  the  bands  of  wicked- 
ness, to  undo  the  heavy  burden,  and  to  let  the 
oppressed  go  free }  " 

This  is,  then,  the  chief  function  of  the  Hebrew 

1  Comickrations    on    Representative    Government,   pp.    51-53, 
American  Edition. 


THE   HEBREW  PROPHECIES.  II5 

prophet ;  he  is  the  expounder  of  the  righteous 
will  of  God,  not  mainly  with  respect  to  future 
events,  but  with  respect  to  present  transgressions 
and  present  obligations  of  kings  and  priests  and 
people.  And  yet  it  would  be  an  error  to  overlook 
or  disparage  his  dealings  with  the  future.  As 
a  teacher  of  righteousness  he  saw  that  present 
disobedience  would  bring  future  retribution,  and 
he  pointed  it  out  with  the  utmost  fidelity.  Any 
man  who  carefully  studies  the  laws  of  God  can 
make  some  predictions  with  great  confidence. 
He  knows  that  certain  courses  of  conduct  will 
be  followed  by  certain  consequences.  Some  of 
the  predictions  of  the  Hebrew  prophets  were  of 
this  nature.  Yet  predictions  of  this  nature  were 
always  conditional.  The  condition  was  not  al- 
ways expressed,  but  it  was  always  understood. 
The  threatening  of  destruction  to  the  disobedi- 
ent was  withdrawn  when  the  disobedient  turned 
from  their  evil  ways.  The  predictions  of  the 
prophets  were  not  always  fulfilled  for  this  good 
reason.  The  rule  is  explicitly  laid  down  by  the 
Prophet  Jeremiah  :  "  At  what  instant  I  shall 
speak  concerning  a  nation  ...  to  destroy  it ;  if 
that  nation  .  .  .  turn  from  their  evil,  I  will  re- 
pent of  the  evil  that  I  thought  to  do  unto  them. 
And  at  what  instant  I  shall  speak  concerning  a 
nation  ...  to  build  and  to  plant  it  ;  if  it  do  evil 
in  my  sight,  that  it  obey  not  my  voice,  then  I 
will  repent  of  the  good  wherewith  I  said  I  would 
benefit  them."  ^ 

^  Jeremiah  xviii.  7-9. 


Il6  WHO    WROTE    THE  BIBLE  i 

And  there  is  something  more  than  this.  In- 
stances are  here  recorded  of  specific  predictions 
of  future  events,  which  came  to  pass  as  they 
were  predicted, — predictions  which  cannot  be 
explained  on  naturalistic  principles.  "  Of  this 
sort,"  says  Bleek,  **  are  the  prophecies  of  Isaiah 
as  to  the  closely  impending  destruction  of  the 
kingdoms  of  Israel  and  Syria,  which  he  predicted 
with  great  confidence  at  a  time  when  the  two 
kingdoms  appeared  particularly  strong  by  their 
treaty  with  each  other,  .  .  .  besides  the  repeated 
predictions  as  to  the  destruction  of  the  mighty 
hosts  of  Sennacherib,  king  of  Assyria,  which  be- 
sieged Jerusalem,  and  the  deliverance  of  the  state 
from  the  greatest  distress.  Among  these  predic- 
tions, those  in  Isaiah  xxix.  i-8,  appear  to  me  par- 
ticularly noteworthy,  where  he  foretells  that  a 
long  time  hence  Jerusalem  should  be  besieged 
by  a  foreign  host  and  pressed  very  hard,  but 
that  the  latter,  just  as  they  believed  they  were 
getting  possession  of  the  city,  should  be  scat- 
tered and  annihilated  ;  for  this  prediction,  from 
its  whole  character,  appears  to  have  been  uttered 
before  any  danger  showed  itself  from  this  quar- 
ter." 1 

Beyond  and  above  all  this  is  the  gradual  rise 
in  Israel  of  that  great  Messianic  hope,  of  which 
the  prophets  were  the  inspired  and  inspiring  wit- 
nesses. We  find,  at  a  very  early  day,  an  expec- 
tation of  a  future  revelation  of  the  glory  of  God, 

1  Introduction  to  the  Old  Testament^  ii.  27. 


THE   HEBREW  PROPHECIES.  WJ 

dawning  upon  the  consciousness  of  the  nation, 
and  expressing  itself  by  the  words  of  its  most 
devout  spirits.  Even  in  prosperous  days  there 
was  a  dim  outrcaching  after  something  better  ; 
in  times  of  disaster  and  overthrow  this  hope  was 
kindled  to  a  passionate  longing.  Of  this  Messi- 
anic hope,  its  nature  and  its  fulfillment,  no  words 
of  mine  can  tell  so  eloquently  as  these  words  of 
Dean  Stanley :  — 

"  It  was  the  distinguishing  mark  of  the  Jewish 
people  that  their  golden  age  was  not  in  the  past, 
but  in  the  future  ;  that  their  greatest  hero  (as 
they  deemed  him  to  be)  was  not  their  Founder, 
but  their  Founder's  latest  Descendant.  Their 
traditions,  their  fancies,  their  glories,  gathered 
round  the  head,  not  of  a  chief  or  warrior  or  sage 
that  had  been,  but  of  a  King,  a  Deliverer,  a 
Prophet  who  was  to  come.  Of  this  singular  ex- 
pectation the  Prophets  were,  if  not  the  chief 
authors,  at  least  the  chief  exponents.  Sometimes 
he  is  named,  sometimes  he  is  unnamed ;  some- 
times he  is  almost  identified  with  some  actual 
Prince  of  the  present  or  the  coming  generation, 
sometimes  he  recedes  into  the  distant  ages.  But 
again  and  again,  at  least  in  the  late  prophetic 
writings,  the  vista  is  closed  by  this  person,  his 
character,  his  reign.  And  almost  everywhere 
the  Prophetic  spirit  in  the  delineation  of  his 
coming  remains  true  to  itself.  He  is  to  be  a 
King,  a  Conqueror,  yet  not  by  the  common 
weapons  of  earthly  warfare,  but  by  those  only 


Il8  WHO    WROTE    THE   BIBLE? 

weapons  which  the  Prophetic  order  recognized ; 
by  justice,  mercy,  truth,  and  goodness  ;  by  suf- 
fering, by  endurance,  by  identification  of  him- 
self with  the  joys,  the  sufferings  of  his  nation  ; 
by  opening  a  wider  sympathy  to  the  whole  hu- 
man race  than  had  ever  been  offered  before. 
That  this  expectation,  however  explained,  ex- 
isted in  a  greater  or  less  degree  amongst  the 
Prophets  is  not  doubted  by  any  theologians  of 
any  school  whatever.  It  is  no  matter  of  con- 
troversy. It  is  a  simply  and  universally  recog- 
nized fact  that,  filled  with  these  Prophetic  im- 
ages, the  whole  Jewish  nation  —  nay,  at  last,  the 
whole  Eastern  world  —  did  look  forward  with 
longing  expectation  to  the  coming  of  this  future 
Conqueror.  Was  this  unparalleled  expectation 
realized  ?  And  here  again  I  speak  only  of  facts 
which  are  acknowledged  by  Germans  and  French- 
men no  less  than  by  Englishmen,  by  critics  and 
by  skeptics  even  more  than  by  theologians  and 
ecclesiastics.  There  did  arise  out  of  this  nation 
a  Character  as  unparalleled  as  the  expectation 
which  had  preceded  him.  Jesus  of  Nazareth 
was,  on  the  most  superficial  no  less  than  on  the 
deepest  view  of  his  coming,  the  greatest  name, 
the  most  extraordinary  power  that  has  ever 
crossed  the  stage  of  History.  And  this  great- 
ness consisted  not  in  outward  power,  but  pre- 
cisely in  those  qualities  in  which  from  first  to 
last  the  Prophetic  order  had  laid  the  utmost 
stress,  — justice  and  love,  goodness  and  truth."  ^ 

1  History  of  the  ycivish  Church,  i.  519,  520. 


THE   HEBREW  PROPHECIES.  II9 

This  is  the  great  fact  from  which  the  student 
of  the  Old  Testament  must  never  remove  his 
attention.  That  this  wonderful  hope  and  expec- 
tation did  suffuse  all  the  utterances  of  the  pro- 
phets is  not  to  be  gainsaid  by  any  candid  man. 
That  the  expectation  assumed,  as  the  ages 
passed,  a  more  and  more  definite  and  personal 
form  is  equally  certain.  Isaiah  was  perhaps  the 
first  to  give  distinct  shape  to  this  prophetic 
hope.  Ewald  thus  summarizes  the  Messianic 
idea  in  the  writings  of  Isaiah  :  — 

"  There  must  come  some  one  who  should  per- 
fectly satisfy  all  the  demands  of  the  true  religion, 
so  as  to  become  the  centre  from  which  all  its 
truth  and  force  should  operate.  His  soul  must 
possess  a  marvelous  and  surpassing  nobleness 
and  divine  power,  because  it  is  his  function  per- 
fectly to  realize  in  life  the  ancient  religion,  the 
requirements  of  which  no  one  has  yet  satisfied, 
and  that,  too,  with  that  spiritual  glorification 
which  the  great  prophets  had  announced.  Un- 
less there  first  comes  some  one  who  shall  trans- 
figure this  religion  into  its  purest  form,  it  will 
never  be  perfected,  and  its  kingdom  will  never 
come.  But  he  will  and  must  come,  for  otherwise 
the  religion  which  demands  him  would  be  false  ; 
he  is  the  first  true  King  of  the  community  of  the 
true  God,  and  as  nothing  can  be  conceived  of  as 
supplanting  him,  he  will  reign  forever  in  irre- 
sistible power ;  he  is  the  divine-human  King, 
whose  coming  had  been  due  ever  since  the  true 


120  IV//0    WROTE    THE   BIBLEi 

community  had  set  up  a  human  monarchy  in  its 
midst,  but  who  had  never  come.  He  is  to  be 
looked  for,  to  be  longed  for,  to  be  prayed  for  ;  and 
how  blessed  it  is  simply  to  expect  him  devoutly, 
and  to  trace  out  every  feature  of  his  likeness. 
To  sketch  the  nobleness  of  his  soul  is  to  pursue 
in  detail  the  possibility  of  perfecting  all  religion  ; 
and  to  believe  in  the  necessity  of  his  coming  is 
to  believe  in  the  perfecting  of  all  divine  agency 
on  earth."  ^ 

It  is  precisely  here  that  we  get  at  the  heart  of 
the  Old  Testament  ;  this  wonderful  fore-looking 
toward  the  Messianic  manifestations  of  God  upon 
the  earth,  which  kindled  the  hearts  of  the  people 
and  found  clearest  utterance  by  the  lips  of  its 
most  inspired  men,  which  binds  this  literature 
all  together,  histories,  songs,  precepts,  allegories. 
This  it  is  which  reveals  the  true  inspiration  of 
these  old  writings,  and  which  makes  them,  to 
every  Christian  heart,  precious  beyond  all  price,, 

Such  being  the  character  of  these  prophetic 
books,  let  us  glance  for  a  moment  at  a  few  of 
them,  merely  for  the  purpose  of  locating  the 
prophecy  in  the  history,  and  of  discerning,  when 
it  is  possible,  the  providential  causes  which  called 
it  forth. 

It  is  difficult  to  tell  which  of  these  fifteen  pro- 
phets, whose  utterances  are  treasured  in  this  col- 
lection, first  appeared  upon  the  scene.  The  prob- 
ability seems  to  be  that  the  earliest  of  them  was 

^   The  History  of  Israel,  iv.  203,  204. 


THE   IIRHREW  PROPJIF.CIES.  \2\ 

Joel.  Opinions  differ  widely  ;  I  cannot  discuss 
them  nor  even  cite  them  ;  but  the  old  theory  that 
Joel  lived  and  preached  about  eight  hundred  and 
seventy-five  years  before  Christ  does  not  seem  to 
me  to  be  invalidated  by  modern  criticism.  He 
was  a  native  of  the  Southern  Kingdom  ;  and  at 
the  time  we  have  named,  the  King  of  Judea  was 
Joash,  whose  dramatic  elevation  to  the  throne  in 
his  seventh  year,  by  Jehoiada  the  priest,  is  nar- 
rated in  the  Book  of  Kings.  It  was  a  time  of  dis- 
turbance and  disaster  in  Judah  and  Jerusalem  ; 
the  boy-king  was  but  a  nominal  ruler  ;  the  regent 
was  Jehoiada  ;  and  incursions  of  the  surrounding 
tribes,  who  carried  away  the  people  and  sold  them 
as  slaves,  kept  the  land  in  a  constant  state  of 
alarm.  Worse  than  this  was  the  visitation  of 
locusts,  continuing,  as  it  would  seem,  for  several 
years,  by  which  the  country  was  stripped  and 
devastated.  This  visitation  furnishes  the  theme 
of  the  short  discourse  which  is  here  reported. 
The  description  of  the  march  of  the  locusts  over 
the  land  is  full  of  poetic  beauty  ;  and  the  people 
are  admonished  to  accept  this  as  a  divine  chas- 
tisement for  their  sins,  and  to  do  the  works  meet 
for  repentance.  Then  comes  the  promise  of  the 
divine  forgiveness,  and  of  that  great  gift  of  the 
Spirit,  whose  fulfillment  Peter  claimed  on  the  day 
of  Pentecost :  **  In  the  midst  of  the  deepest  woes 
which  then  afflicted  the  kingdom,"  says  Ewald, 
"  his  great  soul  grasped  all  the  more  powerfully 
the  eternal  hope  of  the  true  community,  and  im- 


122  WHO    WROTE    THE  BIBLE? 

pressed  it  all  the  more  indelibly  upon  his  people, 
alike  by  the  fiery  glow  of  his  clear  insight  and 
the  entrancing  beauty  of  his  passionate  utter- 
ance.    ^ 

The  next  prophet  in  the  order  of  time  is  un- 
doubtedly Amos.  He  tells  us  that  he  lived  in 
the  days  of  Uzziah,  King  of  Judah,  about  seventy 
years  after  Joel.  He  was  a  herdsman  of  Tekoa, 
a  small  city  of  Judah,  twelve  miles  south  of  Jeru- 
salem. In  these  days  the  Northern  Kingdom 
was  far  more  prosperous  and  powerful  than  the 
Southern  ;  under  Jeroboam  H.  Israel  had  be- 
come rich  and  luxurious  ;  and  the  prophet  was 
summoned,  as  he  declares,  by  the  call  of  Jehovah 
himself  to  leave  his  herds  upon  the  Judean  hills, 
and  betake  himself  to  the  Northern  Kingdom, 
there  to  bear  witness  against  the  pride  and  op- 
pression of  its  people.  This  messenger  and  in- 
terpreter of  Jehovah  to  his  people  is  a  poor  man, 
a  laboring  man  ;  but  he  knows  whose  commission 
he  bears,  and  he  is  not  afraid.  Stern  and  terri- 
ble are  the  woes  that  fall  from  his  lips  :  the  words 
vibrate  yet  with  the  energy  of  his  righteous 
wrath. 

*'  Ye  that  put  far  away  the  evil  day,  and  cause 
the  seat  of  violence  to  come  near  ;  that  lie  upon 
beds  of  ivory,  and  stretch  themselves  upon  their 
couches,  and  eat  the  lambs  out  of  the  flock,  and 
the  calves  out  of  the  midst  of  the  stall ;  that  sing 
idle  songs  to  the  sound  of  the  viol ;  that  devise 

^   T/ic  History  of  Israel,  iv.  139. 


THE  HEBREW  PROPHECIES.  1 23 

for  themselves  instruments  of  music,  like  David  ; 
that  drink  wine  in  bowls,  and  anoint  themselves 
with  the  chief  ointments  ;  but  they  are  not  grieved 
for  the  affliction  of  Joseph." 

Such  luxury  always  goes  hand  in  hand  with 
contempt  of  the  lowly  and  oppression  of  the  poor  ; 
it  is  so  to-day  ;  it  was  so  in  that  far-off  time  ;  and 
this  prophet  pours  upon  it  the  vials  of  the  wrath 
of  God  :  — 

'*  Forasmuch  therefore  as  ye  trample  upon  the 
poor,  and  take  exactions  from  him  of  wheat :  ye 
have  built  houses  of  hewn  stone,  but  ye  shall  not 
dwell  in  them  ;  ye  have  planted  pleasant  vine- 
yards, but  ye  shall  not  drink  the  wine  thereof. 
For  I  know  how  manifold  are  your  transgressions 
and  how  mighty  are  your  sins  ;  ye  that  afflict  the 
just,  that  take  a  bribe,  and  that  turn  aside  the 
needy  in  the  gate  from  their  right." 

It  is  no  wonder  that  Amaziah,  the  priest  of 
Bethel,  writhed  under  the  scourge  of  the  herds- 
man prophet,  and  wanted  to  be  rid  of  him  :  "  O 
thou  seer,"  he  cried,  *'go,  flee  thee  away  into  the 
land  of  Judah,  and  there  eat  bread,  and  prophesy 
there :  but  prophesy  not  again  any  more  in 
Bethel."  But  the  prophet  stood  his  ground  and 
delivered  his  message,  and  it  still  resounds  as  the 
very  voice  of  God  through  every  land  where  the 
greed  of  gold  makes  men  unjust,  and  the  love  of 
pleasure  banishes  compassion  from  human  hearts. 

The  nearest  successor  of  Amos,  in  this  collec- 
tion, seems  to  have  been  Hosea,  who  tells  us  in 


124  ^^-^^^    WROTE    THE   BIBLE? 

the  opening  of  his  prophecy  that  the  word  of  the 
Lord  came  unto  him  in  the  days  of  Uzziah, 
Jotham,  Ahaz,  and  Hezekiah,  kings  of  Judah,  and 
in  the  days  of  Jeroboam,  son  of  Joash,  king  of 
Israel.  There  is  some  doubt  about  the  genuine- 
ness of  this  superscription  ;  but  it  was  about  this 
time,  undoubtedly,  that  Hosea  flourished.  To 
which  kingdom  he  belonged  it  is  not  known  ; 
probably,  however,  to  Israel,  with  whose  affairs 
his  teaching  is  chiefly  concerned.  He  must  have 
followed  close  upon  the  herdsman  of  Tekoa  ;  pos- 
sibly they  were  contemporaries.  His  prophecy, 
too,  is  a  blast  from  the  trumpet  of  the  Lord  our 
Righteousness.  Such  an  indictment  of  a  people 
has  not  often  been  heard. 

"  Hear  the  word  of  the  Lord,  ye  children  of 
Israel :  for  the  Lord  hath  a  controversy  with  the 
inhabitants  of  the  land,  because  there  is  no  truth, 
nor  mercy,  nor  knowledge  of  God  in  the  land. 
There  is  nought  but  swearing  and  breaking  faith, 
and  killing,  and  stealing,  and  committing  adul- 
tery ;  they  break  out,  and  blood  toucheth  blood." 

Especially  severe  is  the  prophet  in  his  denun- 
ciation of  the  priesthood. 

*'  They  feed  on  the  sin  of  my  people,  and  set 
their  heart  on  their  iniquity.  And  it  shall  be, 
like  people,  like  priest :  and  I  will  punish  them 
for  their  ways,  and  will  reward  them  their  doings." 
^  These  prophecies  of  Hosea  are  instinct  with  a 
I  severe  morality  ;  the  ethical  thoroughness  with 
which  he  chastises  the  national  sins  is  unflinch- 


THE  HEBREW  PROPHECIES.  1 25 

ing  ;  but  it  is  not  all  threatening  ;  now  and  again 
we  hear  the  word  of  tenderness,  the  promise  of 
the  divine  forgiveness  :  — 

"  I  will  heal  their  backsliding.  I  will  love  them 
freely  ;  for  mine  anger  is  turned  away  from  him. 
I  will  be  as  the  dew  unto  Israel ;  he  shall  blos- 
som as  the  lily,  and  cast  forth  his  roots  as  Leb- 
anon." 

Micah  follows  Hosea,  at  an  interval  of  perhaps 
fifty  years.  He  lived  in  a  little  village  of  Judah, 
west  of  Jerusalem,  and  exercised  his  ministry  in 
both  kingdoms,  testifying  impartially  against  the 
wickedness  of  Jerusalem  and  Samaria,  though 
the  weight  of  his  censure  seems  to  rest  upon  the 
Judean  capital.  His  strain  is  an  echo  of  the  out- 
cry of  Amos  and  Hosea  ;  it  is  the  same  intense 
indignation  against  the  violence  and  rapacity  of 
the  rich,  against  corrupt  judges,  false  prophets, 
rascally  traders,  treacherous  friends.  For  all 
these  sins  condign  punishment  is  threatened  ; 
and  yet,  after  these  retributive  woes  are  past, 
there  is  promise  of  a  better  day.  The  great  Mes- 
sianic hope  here  begins  to  find  clear  utterance  ; 
the  former  prophets  have  seen  in  their  visions 
only  the  restoration  of  the  people  of  Israel  ;  to 
Micah  there  comes  the  anticipation  of  an  indi- 
vidual Leader  and  Deliverer. 

"  But  thou,  Bethlehem  Ephratah,  which  art 
little  to  be  among  the  thousands  of  Judah,  out  of 
thee  shall  one  come  forth  that  is  to  be  ruler  in 
Israel,  whose  goings   forth    are  from    old,   from 


126  WHO    WROTE    THE  BIBLE? 

everlasting.  .  .  .  And  he  shall  stand  and  shall 
feed  his  flock  in  the  strength  of  the  Lord,  in  the 
majesty  of  the  name  of  the  Lord  his  God  ;  and 
they  shall  abide  ;  for  now  shall  he  be  great  unto 
the  ends  of  the  earth." 

Thus  slowly  broadens  the  dawn  of  the  Mes- 
sianic hope. 

The  first  part  of  the  fourth  chapter  of  Micah, 
which  is  a  prediction  of  the  glory  that  shall  come 
to  Zion  in  the  latter  day,  is  verbally  identical  with 
the  first  part  of  the  second  chapter  of  Isaiah. 
One  of  the  prophets  must  have  quoted  from  the 
other  or  else,  as  Dr.  Geikie  suggests,  both  copied 
from  some  older  prophet. 

After  Micah  comes  the  greatest  of  the  pro- 
phets, Isaiah.  He  appeared  upon  the  scene  in 
his  native  city  of  Jerusalem  about  the  middle  of 
the  eighth  century  before  Christ.  His  work  was 
mainly  done  during  the  reigns  of  Ahaz,  "the 
Grasper,"  one  of  the  vilest  and  most  ungodly  of 
the  Judean  monarchs,  and  of  Hezekiah,  the  good 
king,  about  a  century  and  a  half  before  the  de- 
struction of  Jerusalem. 

About  this  time  Judea  was  constantly  exposed 
to  the  rapacity  of  the  great  Assyrian  power  be- 
fore whose  armies  she  finally  fell ;  sometimes  her 
rulers  entered  into  coalitions  with  the  surround- 
ing nations  to  resist  the  Assyrian  ;  sometimes 
they  submitted  and  paid  heavy  tribute.  Egypt, 
on  the  south,  was  also  a  mighty  empire  at  this 
time,  constantly  at  war  with    Assyria  ;  and  the 


TIIK   HE  BREW  PROPHECIES.  12/ 

kings  of  Judah  sometimes  sought  alliances  with 
one  of  these  great  powers,  as  a  means  of  protec- 
tion against  the  other.  They  proved  to  be  the 
upper  and  nether  millstones  between  which  the 
Jewish  nationality  was  ground  to  powder.  It 
was  in  the  midst  of  these  alarming  signs  of  na- 
tional destruction  that  Isaiah  arose.  Of  the  pro- 
phetic discourses  which  he  delivered  in  Jerusalem 
we  have  about  thirty ;  his  words  are  the  words  of 
a  patriot,  a  statesman,  a  servant  and  messenger 
of  Jehovah.  He  warned  the  kings  against  these 
entangling  alliances  with  foreign  powers  ;  he  ad- 
monished them  to  stand  fast  in  their  allegiance 
to  Jehovah,  and  obey  his  laws  ;  yet  he  saw  that 
they  would  not  heed  his  word,  and  that  swift  and 
sure  destruction  was  coming  upon  the  nation. 
And  his  expectation  was  not  like  that  of  the  other 
prophets,  that  the  nation  as  a  whole  would  be 
saved  out  of  these  judgments  ;  to  him  it  was 
made  plain  that  only  a  remnant  would  survive  ; 
but  that  from  that  remnant  should  spring  a  noble 
'race,  with  a  purer  faith,  in  whom  all  the  nations 
of  the  earth  should  be  blessed.  Of  the  Messi- 
anic hope  as  it  finds  expression  in  these  words  of 
Isaiah  I  have  already  spoken. 

This  Book  of  Isaiah  contains  thirty-one  pro- 
phetic discourses,  some  of  them  mere  fragments. 
There  is  reason  for  doubt  as  to  whether  they 
were  all  spoken  by  Isaiah  ;  when  they  were  gath- 
ered up,  two  hundred  years  later,  some  utter- 
ances of  other  prophets  may  have  been  mingled 


128  IV I/O    WROTE    THE  BIBLE? 

with  them.  Indeed  it  is  now  regarded  as  well- 
nigh  certain  that  the  last  twenty-seven  chapters 
are  the  work  of  a  later  prophet,  —  of  one  who 
wrote  during  the  Captivity.  Professor  Delitzsch, 
in  the  last  edition  of  his  commentary  on  Isaiah, 
finally  concedes  that  this  is  probable.  The  Book 
of  Isaiah,  he  is  reported  as  saying,  **  may  have 
been  an  anthology  of  prophetic  discourses  by 
different  authors  ;  that  is,  it  may  have  been  com- 
posed partly  and  directly  by  Isaiah,  and  partly 
by  other  later  prophets  whose  utterances  con- 
stitute a  really  homogeneous  and  simultaneous 
continuation  of  Isaian  prophecy.  These  later 
prophets  so  closely  resemble  Isaiah  in  prophetic 
vision  that  posterity  might,  on  that  account,  well 
identify  them  with  him, — his  name  being  the 
correct  common  denominator  for  this  collection 
of  prophecies." 

These  words  of  the  most  distinguished  and  de- 
vout of  the  Old  Testament  critics  throw  a  flood 
of  light  on  the  structure  not  only  of  Isaiah,  but 
of  other  Old  Testament  writings  ;  they  show 
how  unlike  our  own  were  the  primitive  ideas  of 
authorship ;  and  how  the  Pentateuch,  for  exam- 
ple, drawn  from  many  sources  and  revised  by 
many  editors,  could  be  called  the  law  of  Moses  ; 
how  his  name  may  have  been  the  "  common  de- 
nominator "  of  all  that  collection  of  laws. 

I  have  shown,  perhaps,  in  these  hasty  notices, 
something  of  the  nature  and  purpose  of  five  of 
these  prophetic  books.     Of  the  rest  I  must  speak 


THE   IIKBREIV  rROPIIECJES.  1 29 

but  a  single  word,  for  the  time  fails  me  to  tell  of 
Zephaniah,  who  in  the  time  of  good  King  Josiah, 
denounced  the  idolatry  of  the  people,  the  injus- 
tice of  its  princes  and  judges,  and  the  corruption 
of  its  prophets  and  priests,  threatened  the  rebel- 
lious with  extermination,  and  promised  to  the 
remnant  an  enduring  peace ;  of  Jeremiah,  who 
about  the  same  time  first  lifted  up  his  voice,  and 
continued  speaking  until  after  the  destruction  of 
Jerusalem,  —  from  whose  writings  we  may  derive 
a  more  complete  and  intelligible  account  of  the 
period  preceding  the  Exile  than  from  any  other 
source;  of  Nahum,  who,  just  before  the  fall  of 
Jerusalem,  uttered  his  oracle  against  Nineveh  ; 
of  Obadiah,  who,  after  the  fall  of  the  holy  city, 
launched  his  thunderbolts  against  the  perfidious 
Edomites  because  of  their  rejoicing  over  the  fate 
of  Jerusalem  ;  of  Ezekiel,  the  prophet  of  the 
Exile,  who  wrote  among  the  captives  by  the  rivers 
of  Babylon ;  of  Haggai  and  Zechariah,  who  came 
back  with  the  returning  exiles,  and  whose  cour- 
ageous voices  cheered  the  laborers  who  wrought 
to  restore  the  city  and  the  temple  ;  of  Malachi, 
whose  pungent  reproofs  of  the  people  for  their 
lack  of  consecration  followed  the  erection  of  the 
second  temple,  and  closed  the  collection  of  the 
Hebrew  prophets. 

The  limits  of  this  small  volume  forbid  us  to 
enter  upon  several  interesting  critical  inquiries  re- 
specting the  component  parts  of  Isaiah  and  Zech- 
ariah, and    especially  the    matter    of    the    varia- 


I30  IVNO    WROTE    THE  BIBLE? 

tions  of  the  Septuagint  from  the  Hebrew  text  in 
the  Book  of  Jeremiah.  In  this  last  named  book 
we  find  the  same  phenomena  that  we  encountered 
in  our  study  of  Samuel  and  The  Kings :  the 
Greek  version  differs  considerably  from  the  He- 
brew ;  a  comparison  of  the  two  illustrates,  as 
nothing  else  can  do,  the  processes  through  which 
the  text  of  these  old  documents  has  passed,  and 
the  freedom  with  which  they  have  been  handled 
by  scribes  and  copyists.  The  Hebrew  text,  from 
which  our  English  version  was  made,  is  gener- 
ally better  than  the  Greek ;  but  there  are  several 
cases  in  which  the  Greek  is  manifestly  more  ac- 
curate. 

There  is  one  book,  reckoned  among  these 
minor  prophets,  of  which  I  have  not  spoken,  and 
to  which  I  ought  to  make  some  reference.  That 
is  the  book  of  Jonah. 

It  is  found  among  the  minor  prophets,  but  it  is 
not  in  any  sense  prophetical  ;  it  is  neither  a  ser- 
mon nor  a  prediction  ;  it  is  a  narrative.  Prob- 
ably it  was  placed  by  the  Jews  among  these  pro- 
phetical books  because  Jonah  was  a  prophet.  But 
this  book  was  not  written  by  Jonah  ;  there  is  not 
a  word  in  the  book  which  warrants  the  belief 
that  he  was  its  author.  It  is  a  story  about  Jonah, 
told  by  somebody  else  long  after  Jonah's  day. 
Jonah,  the  son  of  Amittai,  was  a  prophet  of  the 
Northern  Kingdom  in  the  days  of  Jeroboam  II., 
far  back  in  the  ninth  century.  The  only  refer- 
ence to  him  contained  in  the  Old  Testament  is 


THE  HEBREW  PROPHECIES.  13I 

found  in  2  Kings  xiv.  25.  Jkit  this  book  was 
almost  certainly  written  long  after  the  destruction 
of  Nineveh,  which  took  place  two  hundred  years 
later.  One  reason  for  this  belief  is  in  the  fact 
that  the  writer  of  the  book  feels  it  necessary  to 
explain  what  kind  of  a  city  Nineveh  was.  He 
stops  in  the  midst  of  his  story  to  say  :  "  Now 
Nineveh  was  an  exceeding  great  city  of  three 
days*  journey."  That  explanation  would  have 
been  superfluous  anywhere  in  Israel  in  the  days 
of  Jeroboam  II.,  and  the  past  tense  indicates  that 
it  was  written  by  one  who  was  looking  back  to  a 
city  no  longer  in  existence.  ''Nineveh  was." 
The  character  of  the  Hebrew  also  favors  the 
theory  of  a  later  date  for  the  book.  We  have, 
therefore,  a  tale  that  was  told  about  Jonah  prob- 
ably three  or  four  hundred  years  after  his  day. 

Is  it  a  true  tale,  or  is  it  a  work  of  didactic  fic- 
tion .'*  I  believe  tjiat  it  is  the  latter.  It  is  a  very 
suggestive  apologue,  full  of  moral  beauty  and 
spiritual  power,  designed  to  convey  several  im- 
portant lessons  to  the  minds  of  the  Jewish  peo- 
ple. I  cannot  regard  it  as  the  actual  experience 
of  a  veritable  prophet  of  God,  because  I  can 
hardly  imagine  that  such  a  prophet  could  have 
supposed,  as  the  Jonah  of  this  tale  is  said  to  have 
supposed,  that  by  getting  out  of  the  bounds  of 
the  Kingdom  of  Israel,  he  would  get  out  of  the 
sight  of  Jehovah.  This  is  precisely  what  this 
Jonah  of  the  story  undertook  to  do.  When  he 
was  bidden  to  go  to  Nineveh  and  cry  against  it, 


132  IV7/0    WROTE    THE   BIBLE? 

"  he  rose  up  to  flee  unto  Tarshish  from  the  pres- 
e7icc  of  the  Lord ;  and  he  went  down  to  Joppa, 
and  found  a  ship  going  to  Tarshish  :  so  he  paid 
the  fare  thereof,  and  went  down  into  it,  to  go  with 
them  unto  Tarshish  froiti  the  presence  of  the 
Lord''  (ch.  i.  3).  Is  this  actual  history  ?  Is  this 
the  belief  of  a  genuine  prophet  of  the  Lord  ? 
What  sort  of  a  prophet  is  he  who  holds  ideas  as 
crude  as  this  concerning  the  Being  with  whom 
he  is  in  constant  communication  and  from  whom 
he  receives  his  messages  ?  If  Jonah  did  entertain 
this  belief,  then  it  is  not  likely  that  he  can  teach 
us  anything  about  God  which  it  is  important  that 
we  should  know. 

Thus,  without  touching  the  miraculous  features 
of  the  story,  we  have  sound  reasons  for  believing 
that  this  cannot  be  the  actual  experience  of  any 
veritable  prophet  of  God  ;  that  it  is  not  history, 
but  fiction.  Why  not }  Can  any  one  who  has 
read  the  parable  of  the  Prodigal  Son  or  the  Good 
Samaritan  doubt  that  fiction  may  be  used  in  Sa- 
cred Scripture  for  the  highest  purpose  t 

But  it  is  argued  that  the  references  to  this 
story  which  are  found  in  the  words  of  Christ  au- 
thenticate the  story.  Our  Lord,  in  Matt.  xii. 
39-42,  refers  to  this  book.  He  speaks  of  the 
repentance  of  the  Ninevites  under  the  preaching 
of  Jonah  as  a  rebuke  to  the  Jews  who  had  heard 
the  word  of  life  from  him  and  had  not  repented  ; 
and  he  uses  these  words  :  "  An  evil  and  adulter- 
ous generation  seeketh  a  sign  ;  and  there  shall  no 


THE   HEBREW  PROPHECIES.  I  33 

sign  be  given  to  it  but  the  sign  of  Jonah  the 
prophet:  for  as  Jonah  was  three  days  and  three 
nights  in  the  belly  of  the  whale  ;  so  shall  the  Son 
of  man  be  three  days  and  three  nights  in  the 
heart  of  the  earth." 

This  confirms,  say  the  orthodox  commentators, 
the  historical  accuracy  of  the  story  of  Jonah. 
"  If,"  says  Canon  Liddon,  **  he  would  put  his 
finger  on  a  fact  in  past  Jewish  history  which,  by 
its  admitted  reality,  would  warrant  belief  in  his 
own  resurrection,  he  points  to  Jonah's  being 
three  days  and  three  nights  in  the  belly  of  the 
whale."  This  use  of  the  incident  by  our  Lord 
clearly  authenticates  the  incident  as  an  actual 
historical  fact.  So  say  the  conservative  theolo- 
gians. And  so  say  also  the  men  who  labor  to 
destroy  the  authority  of  Christ.  Mr.  Huxley  per- 
fectly agrees  with  Canon  Liddon.  He  praises 
the  Canon's  penetration  and  consistency ;  he 
agrees  that  there  can  be  no  other  possible  inter- 
pretation of  Christ's  words.  The  ultra-conserva- 
tive and  the  anti-Christian  critics  are  at  one  in 
insisting  that  Christ  stands  committed  to  the 
literal  truth  of  the  narrative  in  Jonah.  The  in- 
ference of  the  ultra-conservative  is  that  the  nar- 
rative is  historically  true  ;  the  inference  of  the 
anti-Christian  critic  is  that  Jesus  is  unworthy  our 
confidence  as  a  religious  teacher;  that  one  who 
fully  indorsed  such  a  preposterous  tale  cannot  be 
divine.  It  is  instructive  to  observe  the  ultra-con- 
servative critics  thus  playing  steadily  into  the 


134  ^^^^^    WROTE    THE   BIBLE? 

hands  of  the  anti-Christian  critics,  furnishing 
them  with  ammunition  with  which  to  assail  the 
very  citadel  of  the  Christian  faith.  It  is  a  kind 
of  business  in  which,  I  am  sorry  to  say,  they  have 
been  diligently  engaged  for  a  good  while. 

Now  I,  for  my  part,  utterly  deny  the  proposi- 
tion which  these  allied  forces  of  skepticism  and 
traditionalism  are  enlisted  in  supporting.  I  deny 
that  Jesus  Christ  can  be  fairly  quoted  as  authen- 
ticating this  narrative.  I  maintain  that  he  used 
it  allegorically  for  purposes  of  illustration,  with- 
out intending  to  express  any  opinion  as  to  the 
historical  verity  of  the  narrative.  It  was  used  in 
a  literary  way,  and  not  in  a  dogmatic  way.  Our 
Lord  speaks  always  after  the  manner  of  men,  — 
speaks  the  common  speech  of  the  people,  takes 
up  the  phrases  and  even  the  fables  that  he  finds 
upon  their  lips,  and  uses  them  for  his  own  pur- 
poses. He  does  not  stop  to  criticise  all  their 
stories,  or  to  set  them  right  in  all  their  scientific 
errors  ;  that  would  have  been  utterly  aside  from 
his  main  purpose,  and  would  certainly  have  con- 
fused them  and  led  them  astray.  He  speaks  al- 
ways of  the  rising  and  the  setting  of  the  sun, 
using  the  phrases  that  were  current  at  that  time, 
and  never  hinting  at  the  error  underneath  them. 
He  knew  what  these  people  meant  by  these 
phrases.  If  he  knew  that  these  phrases  con- 
veyed an  erroneous  meaning,  why  did  he  not 
correct  them  1  So,  too,  he  quotes  from  the  story 
of  the  Creation  in  Genesis,  and  never  intimates 


THE  HEBREW  PROPHECIES.  1 35 

that  the  six  days  there  mentioned  are  not  literal 
days  of  twenty-four  hours  each.  He  knew  that 
those  to  whom  he  was  speaking  entertained  this 
belief,  and  put  this  interpretation  upon  these 
words.     Why  does  he  not  set  it  aside } 

These  questions  may  admit  of  more  than  one 
answer ;  but,  taking  the  very  highest  view  of 
Christ's  person,  it  is  certainly  enough  to  say  that 
any  such  discussion  of  scientific  questions  would 
have  been,  as  even  we  can  see,  palpably  unwise, 
There  was  no  preparation  in  the  human  mind  at 
that  day  for  the  reception  and  verification  of  such 
a  scientific  revelation.  It  could  not  have  been 
received.  It  would  not  have  been  preserved.  It 
would  only  have  confused  and  puzzled  the  minds 
of  his  hearers,  and  would  have  shut  their  minds 
at  once  against  that  moral  and  spiritual  truth 
which  he  came  to  impart.  And  what  we  have 
said  about  scientific  questions  applies  with  equal 
force  to  questions  of  Old  Testament  criticism. 
To  have  entered  upon  the  discussion  of  these 
questions  with  the  Jews  would  have  thwarted  his 
highest  purpose.  In  the  largest  sense  of  the 
word  these  Scriptures  were  true.  Their  sub- 
stantial historical  accuracy  he  wished  to  confirm. 
Their  great  converging  lines  of  light  united  in 
him.  He  constantly  claimed  their  fulfillment  in 
his  person  and  his  kingdom.  Why,  then,  should 
he  enter  upon  a  kind  of  discussion  which  would 
have  tended  to  confuse  and  obscure  the  main 
truths  which  he  came  to  teach  t     If,  then,  he  re- 


136  WHO    WROTE    THE  BIBLE? 

fers  to  these  Scriptures,  he  uses  them  for  his  own 
ethical  and  spiritual  purposes,  —  not  to  indorse 
their  scientific  errors  ;  not  to  confirm  the  methods 
of  interpretation  in  use  among  the  Jews. 

But  Mr.  Huxley  insists,  and  all  the  ultra-con- 
servative commentators  join  him  in  insisting,  that 
Christ  could  not,  if  he  had  been  an  honest  man, 
have  spoken  thus  of  Jonah  if  the  story  of  Jonah 
had  not  been  historically  accurate.  This  is  the 
way  he  puts  it :  "  If  Jonah's  three  days'  residence 
in  the  whale  is  not  an  *  admitted  fact,'  how  could  it 
*  warrant  belief '  in  the  *  coming  resurrection  '  ?  "  1 
Mr.  Huxley  is  using  Canon  Liddon's  phrases  here  ; 
but  he  is  using  them  to  confute  those  for  whom, 
as  he  knows  very  well.  Canon  Liddon  does  not 
speak.  Those  who  say  that  the  story  of  Jonah  is 
an  "  admitted  reality  "  may,  perhaps,  be  able  to 
see  that  it  "warrants  belief  "  in  the  "  coming  res- 
urrection." To  my  own  mind,  even  this  is  by  no 
means  clear.  I  do  not  see  how  the  one  event,  even 
if  it  were  an  **  admitted  reality,"  could  "warrant 
belief  "  in  the  other.  No  past  event  can  warrant 
belief  in  any  future  event,  unless  the  two  events 
are  substantially  identical.  The  growth  of  an 
acorn  into  an  oak  in  the  last  century  "  warrants 
the  belief  "  that  an  acorn  will  grow  into  an  oak  in 
the  present  century  ;  but  it  does  not  "  warrant  the 
belief  "  that  a  city  planted  on  an  eligible  site  will 
grow  to  be  a  great  metropolis.  The  one  event 
might  illustrate  the  other,  but  no  conclusions  of 

^  The  Nineteenth  Century^  July,  1890. 


THE  HEBREW  PROPHECIES.  I  37 

logic  can  be  carried  from  the  one  to  the  other. 
It  is  precisely  so  with  these  two  events.  There 
is  a  certain  analogy  between  the  experience  of 
Jonah,  as  told  in  the  book,  and  that  of  our  Lord  ; 
but  it  is  ridiculous  to  say  that  the  one  event,  if 
an  "admitted  reality,"  "warrants  belief"  in  the 
other,  —  whether  it  is  said  by  Mr.  Huxley  or 
Canon  Liddon.  Our  Lord's  words  convey  no 
such  meaning.  In  truth,  if  we  are  here  dealing 
with  scientific  comparisons,  the  one  event,  if  taken 
as  an  "admitted  reality,"  waiTants  disbelief  in 
the  other.  What  are  our  Lord's  precise  words  } 
''As  Jonah  was  three  days  and  three  nights  in 
the  whale's  belly,  so  shall  the  Son  of  man  be  three 
days  and  three  nights  in  the  heart  of  the  earth." 
We  are  told  by  Mr.  Huxley  and  his  orthodox 
allies  that  we  must  take  this  as  a  literal  historical 
parallel,  or  not  at  all ;  that  if  we  treat  it  in  any 
other  way,  we  accuse  our  Lord  of  dishonesty. 
What,  then,  was  the  condition  of  Jonah  during 
these  three  days  and  nights  ?  Was  he  dead  or 
alive  ?  He  was  certainly  alive,  if  the  tale  is  history 
—  very  thoroughly  alive  in  all  his  faculties.  He 
was  praying  part  of  the  time,  and  part  of  the  time 
he  was  writing  poetry.  We  have  a  long  and 
beautiful  poem  which  he  is  said  to  liave  com- 
posed during  that  enforced  retirement  from  ac- 
tive life.  It  would  appear  that  his  release  took 
place  immediately  after  the  poem  was  finished. 
If,  now,  these  events  are  bound  together  with  the 
links  of  logic,  if  the  one  event   is  the  historic 


138  IV//0    WROTE    THE  BIBLE? 

counterpart  of  the  other,  the  Son  of  man,  during 
the  three  days  of  his  sojourn  in  the  heart  of  the 
earth,  was  not  dead  at  all  !  He  was  only  hidden 
for  a  little  space  from  the  sight  of  men.  He  was 
alive  all  the  while,  and  tJiere  was  no  resnri'ection  ! 
It  is  to  this  that  you  come  when  you  begin  to 
apply  to  these  parables  and  allegories  of  the 
Bible  the  methods  of  scientific  exposition.  This 
may  be  satisfactory  enough  to  Mr.  Huxley.  I 
should  like  to  know  how  it  suits  his  orthodox 
allies. 

The  fact  is,  that  you  are  not  dealing  here 
with  equivalents,  but  with  analogies  ;  not  with 
laws  of  evidence,  but  with  figures  of  rhetoric  : 
and  it  is  absurd  to  say  that  one  member  of 
an  analogy  "  warrants  belief "  in  the  existence 
of  the  other.  There  is  no  such  logical  nexus. 
The  leaven  in  the  meal  does  not  "  warrant  be- 
lief "  in  the  spread  of  Christianity,  but  it  serves 
to  illustrate  it.  The  story  of  the  Prodigal  Son 
does  not  "warrant  belief"  in  the  fatherly  love 
of  God,  but  it  helps  us  to  understand  something 
of  that  love,  and  it  helps  us  precisely  as  much  as 
if  it  had  been  a  veritable  history,  instead  of  being, 
as  it  is,  a  pure  work  of  fiction. 

"  What  sort  of  value,"  asks  Mr.  Huxley,  "  as 
an  illustration  of  God's  methods  of  dealing  with 
sin,  has  an  account  of  an  event  that  never  hap- 
pened .-* "  Such  an  admonition,  he  says,  is  *' mor- 
ally about  on  a  level  with  telling  a  naughty  child 
that  a  bogy  is  coming  to  fetch  it  away."     Let  us 


THE  HEBREW  rROPHECIES.  139 

apply  this  maxim  to  some  of  Mr.  Huxley's  homi- 
lies :  — 

"  Surely,"  he  says  in  one  of  his  "  Lay  Sermons," 
"our  innocent  pleasures  are  not  so  abundant  in 
this  life  that  we  can  afford  to  despise  this  or  any 
other  source  of  them.  We  should  fear  being 
banished  for  our  neglect  to  that  limbo  where  the 
great  Florejitine  tells  us  are  those  ivho  during  this 
life  wept  when  they  might  be  joyful^  ^  This 
limbo  of  Dante's  is  not,  I  dare  say,  an  "admit- 
ted reality"  in  Mr.  Huxley's  physical  geography. 
"What  sort  of  value,"  therefore,  has  his  refer- 
ence to  it }  Is  he  merely  raising  the  cry  of 
bogy  ?  He  certainly  does  intend  what  he  says 
as  a  dissuasive  from  a  certain  course  of  errone- 
ous conduct.  I  venture  to  insist  that  he  has  a 
real  meaning,  and  that,  although  the  limbo  is  a 
myth,  the  condition  which  he  intends  to  illus- 
trate by  his  allusion  to  it  is  a  reality. 

Once  more :  "  I  do  not  suppose  that  the  dead 

soul  of  Peter  Bell,  of  whom  the  great  poet  of 

nature  says,  — 

'  A  primrose  by  the  river's  brim 
A  yellow  primrose  was  to  him, 
And  it  was  nothing  more,' 

would  have  been  a  whit  roused  from  its  apathy 
by  the  information  that  the  primrose  is  a  Dicoty- 
ledonous Exogen,  with  a  monopetalous  corolla 
and  a  central  placentation."  ^ 

^  Lay  Sermons  and  Addresses^  p.  92. 
2  Ibid.  p.  91. 


I40  WHO    WROTE    THE  BIBLE? 

Does  Mr.  Huxley  believe  that  Peter  Bell  was 
a  historical  person  ?  If  he  was  not,  how,  in  the 
name  of  biological  theology,  could  his  dead  soul 
have  been  roused  by  any  information  whatever  ? 
Yet  these  sentences  of  his  have  a  real  and  valu- 
able meaning.  It  is  evident  that  Mr.  Huxley 
does  understand  the  uses  of  allegory  and  fable 
for  purposes  of  illustration  ;  that  he  can  employ 
characters  and  situations  which  are  not  histori- 
cal, but  purely  imaginary,  to  illustrate  the  reali- 
ties which  he  is  trying  to  present,  —  speaking  of 
them  all  the  while  just  as  if  they  were  historical 
persons  or  places,  and  trusting  his  readers  to  in- 
terpret him  aright.  Such  a  use  of  language  is 
common  in  all  literature.  To  affirm  that  our 
Lord  could  not  resort  to  it  without  dishonesty 
is  to  deny  to  him  the  ordinary  instruments  of 
speech. 

"  We  may  conclude,  then,"  with  Professor  Ladd, 
"  that  the  reference  to  Jonah  does  not  cover  the 
question  whether  the  prophet's  alleged  sojourn  in 
the  sea  monster  is  an  historical  verity  ;  and  that 
it  is  no  less  uncritical  than  invidious  to  make  the 
holding  of  any  particular  theory  of  the  Book  of 
Jonah  a  test  of  allegiance  to  the  teachings  of  the 
Master."  i 

It  is  evident  enough,  as  Professor  Cheyne  has 
said,  that  the  symbolic  meaning  of  the  book  was 
the  most  important  part  of  it  in  the  New  Testa- 
ment times.     But  other  and  more  obvious  mcan- 

^   The  Doctrine  of  Sacred  So-ipttire,  i.  67. 


THE   HEBREW  PROPHECIES.  14 1 

ings  are  conveyed  by  the  narrative.  Indeed, 
there  is  scarcely  another  book  in  the  Old  Testa- 
ment whose  meaning  is  so  clear,  whose  message 
is  so  divine.  Apologue  though  it  is,  it  is  full  of 
the  very  truth  of  God.  There  is  not  one  of  the 
minor  prophecies  that  has  more  of  the  real  gos- 
pel in  it.  To  the  people  who  first  received  it, 
how  full  of  admonition  and  reproof  it  must  have 
been  !  That  great  city  Nineveh  —  a  city  which 
was,  in  its  day,  as  Dr.  Geikie  says,  "  as  intensely 
abhorred  by  the  Jews  as  Carthage  was  by  Rome, 
or  France  under  the  elder  Napoleon  was  by  Ger- 
many "  — was  a  city  dear  to  God  !  He  had  sent 
his  own  prophet  to  warn  it  of  its  danger ;  and 
his  prophet,  instead  of  being  stoned  or  torn 
asunder,  as  the  prophets  of  God  had  often  been 
by  their  own  people,  had  been  heard  and  his 
message  heeded.  The  Ninevites  had  turned  to 
God,  and  God  had  forgiven  them  !  God  was  no 
less  ready  to  forgive  and  save  Nineveh  than  Je- 
rusalem. What  a  wonderful  disclosure  of  the 
love  of  the  universal  Father  !  What  a  telling 
blow,  even  in  those  old  days,  at  the  "  middle 
wall  of  partition  "  by  which  the  Jew  fenced  out 
the  Gentile  from  his  sympathy ! 

And  then  the  gentle  rebuke  of  Jonah's  petu- 
lant narrowness  !  How  true  is  the  touch  that 
describes  Jonah  as  angry  because  God  had  for- 
given the  Ninevites  !  His  credit  as  a  prophet 
was  gone.  I  suppose  that  he  was  afraid  also,  like 
many  theologians  of  more  modern  times,  that  if 


142  WHO    WROTE    THE  BIBLE? 

threatened  penalty  were  remitted  solely  on  the 
ground  of  the  repentance  of  the  sinners,  the  foun- 
dations of  the  divine  government  would  be  un- 
dermined. How  marvelously  does  the  infinite 
pity  and  clemency  of  God  shine  out  through  all 
this  story,  as  contrasted  with  the  petty  consis- 
tency and  the  grudging  compassion  of  man  ;  and 
how  clearly  do  we  hear  in  this  beautiful  narra- 
tive the  very  message  of  the  gospel :  "  Let  the 
wicked  forsake  his  way,  and  the  unrighteous  man 
his  thoughts :  and  let  him  return  to  the  Lord,  and 
he  will  have  mercy  upon  him  ;  and  to  our  God, 
for  he  will  abundantly  pardon.  For  my  thoughts 
are  not  your  thoughts,  neither  are  your  ways  my 
ways,  saith  the  Lord." 

May  I  say,  in  closing,  that  the  treatment  which 
the  Book  of  Jonah  has  received,  alike  from  skep- 
tics and  from  defenders  of  the  faith,  illustrates, 
in  a  striking  way,  the  kind  of  controversy  which 
is  raised  by  the  attempt  to  maintain  the  infalli- 
bility of  the  Bible.  The  crux  of  all  the  critics, 
orthodox  and  heterodox,  is  the  story  about  the 
fish.  The  orthodox  have  assumed  that  the  nar- 
rative without  the  miracle  was  meaningless,  and 
the  heterodox  have  taken  them  at  their  word.  In 
their  dispute  over  the  question  whether  Jonah 
did  really  compose  that  psalm  in  the  belly  of 
the  fish,  with  his  head  festooned  with  seaweed, 
they  have  almost  wholly  overlooked  the  great 
lessons  of  fidelity  to  duty,  of  the  universal  di- 
vine fatherhood,  and  the  universal  human  broth- 


THE   HEBREW  PROPHECIES.  1 43 

erhood,  which  the  story  so  beautifully  enforces. 
How  easy  it  is  for  saints  as  well  as  scoffers,  in 
their  dealing  with  the  messages  of  God  to  men, 
to  tithe  the  mint,  anise,  and  cummin  of  the  lit- 
eral sense,  and  neglect  the  weightier  matters  of 
judgment,  mercy,  and  truth  which  they  arc  in- 
tended to  convey ! 


CHAPTER  VI. 

THE    LATER    HEBREW    HISTORIES. 

After  the  Book  of  the  Law  had  been  revised 
by  Ezra,  and  the  Book  of  the  Prophets  had  been 
compiled  by  Nehemiah,  there  still  remained  a 
body  of  sacred  writings,  not  Mosaic  in  their  ori- 
gin and  not  from  the  hands  of  any  recognized 
prophet,  but  still  of  value  in  the  eyes  of  the  Jews. 
We  cannot  tell  the  time  at  which  the  work  of 
collecting  these  Scriptures  was  begun  ;  possibly 
it  was  going  on  while  the  Books  of  the  Prophets 
were  being  compiled.  This  third  collection  was 
called  from  the  first  by  the  Jews,  "  Ketubim," 
meaning  simply  writings  ;  the  Greeks  afterward 
called  it  by  a  name  which  has  been  anglicized, 
and  which  has  become  the  common  designation 
of  these  writings  among  us,  "The  Hagiographa," 
or  the  Holy  Writings.  The  adjective  holy  was 
not  a  part  of  the  Jewish  title ;  it  would  have  over- 
stated, somewhat,  their  first  estimate  of  this  part 
of  their  Bible.  P^or  while  the  degree  of  sacred- 
ness  attached  to  these  books  gradually  increased, 
they  were  always  held  as  quite  inferior  to  the 
other  two  groups  of  Scriptures.  For  convenience 
the  list  of  books  in  this  collection  may  be  here 
repeated  :  — 


THE   LATER  HEBREW  HISTORIES.         1 45 

The  Psalms. 

The  Proverbs. 

Job. 

The  Song  of  Solomon. 

Ruth. 

Lamentations. 

Ecclesiastes. 

Esther. 

Daniel. 

Ezra. 

Nehemiah. 

1  Chronicles. 

2  Chronicles. 

The  arrangement  is  topical ;  first,  three  poetical 
books,  The  Psalms,  The  Proverbs,  and  Job ;  then 
five  so-called  Megilloth,  or  Rolls,  read  in  the  later 
synagogues  on  certain  great  feast  days, — The 
Song  of  Songs  at  the  Passover,  Ruth  at  Pente- 
cost, Lamentations  on  the  anniversary  of  the 
burning  of  the  temple,  Ecclesiastes  at  the  Feast 
of  Tabernacles,  and  Esther  at  the  Feast  of  Pu- 
rim  ;  lastly,  the  historical  and  quasi-historical 
books,  Daniel,  Ezra,  Nehemiah,  and  the  Chroni- 
cles. 

Of  Ruth  I  have  already  spoken  in  its  proper 
historical  connection,  taking  it  vi^ith  the  Book  of 
Judges. 

In  treating  of  the  remaining  books  I  shall  not 
follow  the  order  of  the  Hebrew  Bible,  which  I 
have  given  above,  but  shall  rather  reverse  it, 
treating  first  of  the  historical  books,  Ezra,  Nehe- 


146  WHO    WROTE    THE  BIBLE? 

miah,  and  the  Chronicles,  also  of  Esther  and 
Daniel ;  then,  in  a  subsequent  chapter,  of  the  po- 
etical books,  the  Lamentations,  the  books  attrib- 
uted to  Solomon,  —  Proverbs,  Ecclesiastes,  and 
Solomon's  Song,  —  and  finally  of  Job  and  the 
Psalms. 

The  histories  which,  under  the  title  of  the 
"Earlier  Prophets,"  are  contained  in  the  middle 
group  of  the  Hebrew  Scriptures,  have  been  stud- 
ied in  a  former  chapter.  In  this  later  group  of 
writings  we  find  certain  other  historical  works 
which  cover  the  same  ground.  In  the  words  of 
Mr.  Horton  :  — 

"  Taking  historical  excerpts  from  the  first  six 
books  of  the  Bible,  and  then  going  on  in  a  con- 
tinuous narrative  from  the  beginning  of  Judges 
to  the  end  of  the  Second  Book  of  Kings,  we  have 
a  story  —  true,  a  story  with  many  gaps  in  it,  still 
a  connected  story  —  from  the  earliest  times  to 
the  captivity  of  Judah.  Then,  starting  from  the 
First  Book  of  Chronicles  and  reading  on  to  the 
end  of  Nehemiah,  we  have,  in  a  very  compressed 
form,  though  enlarged  in  some  parts,  a  complete 
record  from  Adam  to  the  return  from  the  Cap- 
tivity ;  at  the  end  of  this  long  sweep  of  narrative 
comes  the  Book  of  Esther,  which  is  a  brief  ap- 
pendix containing  a  historical  episode  of  the  Cap- 
tivity. Taking  these  two  distinct  histories,  we 
have  two  lines  of  narrative,  an  older  and  a  later, 
which  run  together  up  to  the  Captivity ;  the 
older,  though  covering  a  shorter  time,  is  much 


THE   LATER  HEBREW  HISTORIES.         147 

the  larger  and  fuller;  the  later,  very  thin  in  most 
parts,  becomes  very  full  in  its  account  of  the 
Temple-worship  and  Temple-kingship  at  Jerusa- 
lem, and  then  continues  the  story  alone  up  to  the 
end  of  the  Captivity,  and  the  reestablishment  of 
the  Temple-worship  after  the  return."  ^ 

The  older  history,  contained  in  Samuel  and 
Kings,  breaks  off  abruptly  in  the  time  of  the 
Captivity ;  we  know  that  it  must  have  been  writ- 
ten during  the  Exile,  and  could  not  have  been 
written  earlier  than  about  550  b.  c.  The  later 
history,  in  Chronicles  and  Ezra-Nehemiah,  begins 
with  Adam,  and  goes  on,  by  one  or  two  genea- 
logical tables,  for  almost  two  centuries  after  the 
Captivity.  In  i  Chronicles  iii.  19,  the  genealogy 
of  Zerubbabel,  who  came  back  with  the  captives, 
is  carried  on  for  at  least  six  generations.  Count- 
ing thirty  years  for  a  generation,  the  table  ex- 
tends the  time  of  the  writing  of  this  record  to  at 
least  one  hundred  and  eighty  years  after  the  re- 
turn of  the  exiles.  This  occurred  in  538  b.  c, 
and  the  book  must  therefore  have  been  written 
as  late  as  350  b.  c,  or  very  nearly  two  centuries 
after  the  earlier  history  was  finished. 

There  are  conclusive  reasons  for  believing  that 
the  four  books  now  under  consideration,  the  two 
books  of  Chronicles,  Ezra,  and  Nehemiah,  were 
originally  but  one  book.  In  the  Hebrew  Canon 
the  Chronicles  is  now  but  one  book ;  and  in  the 
old  Hebrew  collections  Ezra  and  Nehemiah  were 

1  Inspiration  and  the  Bible,  pp.  159,  160. 


148  WHO    WROTE    THE   BIBLE? 

but  one  book.  It  was  in  the  Septuagint  that  they 
were  first  separated.  Thus  we  have  the  four  cer- 
tainly reduced  to  two.  And  it  is  not  difficult,  on 
an  inspection  of  the  documents,  to  reduce  the 
two  to  one.  If  you  will  open  your  Bible  at  the 
last  verses  of  Second  Chronicles,  beginning  with 
the  twenty-second  verse  of  the  last  chapter,  and, 
fixing  your  eyes  on  this  passage,  will  ask  some 
one  to  read  to  you  the  first  three  verses  of  the 
Book  of  Ezra,  you  will  see  how  these  two  books 
were  formerly  one  ;  and  how  the  manuscript  was 
torn  in  two  in  the  wrong  place  ;  so  that  the  Book 
of  Chronicles  actually  ends  in  the  middle  of  a 
sentence.  The  period  at  the  end  of  this  book 
ought  to  be  expunged. 

The  explanation  of  this  curious  phenomenon  is 
not  difficult.  The  last  group  of  sacred  writings, 
what  the  Jews  call  the  Ketubim,  was  kept  open 
for  additions  to  a  very  late  day.  After  this  his- 
tory was  written  (Chronicles-Ezra-Nehcmiah)  the 
question  arose  whether  it  should  be  admitted  into 
the  canon.  The  first  answer  to  this  question 
evidently  was :  ''  We  do  not  need  the  first  part  of 
the  history,  —  the  Book  of  Chronicles,  —  for  we 
have  the  substance  of  it  already  in  the  Books  of 
Samuel  and  Kings  and  in  the  earlier  writings  ; 
but  we  do  need  the  last  part  of  it,  *  Ezra-Nehe- 
miah,*  for  this  carries  the  history  on  beyond  the 
Captivity,  and  gives  the  account  of  the  return  of 
the  exiles  and  the  rebuilding  of  the  city  and  the 
temple."     So  they  tore  the  book  in  two,  and  put 


THE   LATER  HEBREW  HISTORIES.         1 49 

the  last  part  of  it  into  the  growing  collection  of 
"  Ketubim,"  or  **  Writings."  The  careless  divi- 
sion of  the  manuscript,  not  at  the  beginning  of  a 
paragraph,  but  in  the  middle  of  a  sentence,  made 
it  necessary,  of  course,  for  the  scribe  to  copy  at 
the  beginning  of  the  Ezra-roll  the  words  belong- 
ing to  it  which  had  been  torn  off ;  but  they  were 
not  erased  from  the  first  part,  and  have  been  left 
there,  as  the  old  historians  say,  "unto  this  day." 

By  and  by  there  were  requests  that  this  first 
part  —  the  Chronicles  —  be  admitted  to  the  Ke- 
tubim. The  priests  and  the  Levites  of  the  temple 
would  be  sure  to  urge  this  request,  for  the  Chron- 
icles is  the  one  book  of  the  Old  Testament  in 
which  their  order  is  glorified  ;  and  at  length  the 
request  was  granted  ;  the  Chronicles  were  added 
to  the  collection,  and  as  they  went  in  last  they 
follow  Ezra-Nehemiab,  although  they  belong, 
chronologically,  before  it.  They  stand  to-day  at 
the  end  of  the  Hebrew  Bible,  and  thus  testify,  by 
their  position,  respecting  the  lateness  of  the  date 
at  which  they  were  admitted  to  the  canon.  Thus 
the  Hebrew  Bible  ends  with  an  incomplete  sen- 
tence. 

What  this  later  history  may  have  been  called 
before  it  was  torn  in  two  we  have  no  means  of 
knowing ;  but  the  Jews  called  the  last  part  of  it 
(which  stands  first  in  their  collection)  by  the 
name  of  Ezra,  and  the  first  part  of  it  (which  is 
last  in  their  canon)  they  named,  "  Events  of  the 
Times,"  or  ''Annals."     In  the    Septuagint   this 


150  WI/O  WROTE    THE   BIBLE? 

book  of  the  Chronicles  was  called  "  Paraleipo- 
mena,"  "Leavings,"  "Things  Left  Over,"  "Sup- 
plements." Jerome  first  gave  it  the  name  of 
"Chronicles,"  by  which  we  know  it. 

The  name  of  the  author  of  this  book  is  un- 
known. The  strong  probabilities  are  that  he  was 
a  Levite,  connected  with  the  temple  service  in 
Jerusalem.  The  Levites  had  charge  of  the  pub- 
lic religious  services  of  the  temple,  especially  of 
its  music;  and  the  fullness  with  which  this  writer 
expatiates  upon  all  this  part  of  the  ritual  shows 
that  it  was  very  dear  to  his  heart.^  Everything 
relating  to  the  Levitical  priesthood  and  its  ser- 
vices is  dwelt  upon  in  this  book  with  emphasis 
and  elaboration  ;  as  the  histories  of  Samuel  and 
the  Kings  are  written  from  the  prophetical  stand- 
point, this  is  most  evidently  written  from  the 
priestly  point  of  view. 

In  these  books  of  the  Chronicles  the  author 
constantly  points  out  the  sources  of  his  informa- 
tion. He  tells  us  that  he  quotes  from  the  "  Book 
of  the  Kings  of  Judah  and  Israel,"  from  the 
"Acts  of  the  Kings  of  Israel,"  and  from  "The 
Story  of  the  Book  of  the  Kings."  The  identity 
of  these  books  is  a  disputed  question.  It  is  sup- 
posed by  some  critics  that  he  refers  to  the  Books 
of  Kings  in  our  Bible  ;  others  maintain  that  he 
draws  from  another  and  much  larger  book  of  a 

1  See  I  Chron.  vi.  31-4S  ;  xv.  16-24;  xvi.  4-42  ;  xxv.  2  Chron. 
V.  12,  13;  vii.  6;  viii.  14;  xx.  19-21;  xxiii.  13;  xxix.  25-30;  xxxL 
2;  xxxiv.  12;  XXXV.  15. 


THE  LATER  HEBREW  HISTORIES.         151 

similar  name  which  has  been  lost.  The  latter 
theory  is  generally  maintained  by  the  more  con- 
servative critics  ;  and  it  is  easier  to  vindicate  the 
author's  trustworthiness  on  this  supposition  ; 
yet  even  so  there  are  serious  difficulties  in  the 
case  ;  for  it  is  hard  to  believe  that  he  could  have 
written  these  annals  without  having  had  before 
him  the  earlier  record,  and  between  the  two  are 
many  discrepancies.  The  main  facts  of  the  his- 
tory are  substantially  the  same  in  the  two  narra- 
tives ;  but  in  minor  matters  the  disagreements 
and  contradictions  are  numerous.  It  is  part  of 
the  purpose  of  this  study  to  look  difficulties  of 
this  kind  fairly  in  the  face  ;  it  is  treason  to  the 
spirit  of  all  truth  to  refuse  to  do  so.  Let  us  ex- 
amine, then,  a  few  of  these  discrepancies  between 
the  earlier  and  later  history. 

In  2  Samuel  viii.  4,  we  are  told  that  in  David's 
victory  over  Hadadezer  king  of  Zobah,  he  took 
from  the  latter  "  a  thousand  and  seven  hundred 
horsemen."  In  i  Chronicles  xviii.  4,  he  is  said 
to  have  taken  "  a  thousand  chariots  and  seven 
thousand  horsemen."  In  2  Samuel  xxiv.  9,  Da- 
vid's census  is  said  to  have  returned  800,000 
warriors  for  Israel,  and  500,000  for  Judah.  In  i 
Chronicles  xxi.  5,  the  number  is  stated  as 
1,100,000  for  Israel,  and  470,000  for  Judah.  In 
2  Samuel  xxiv.  24,  David  is  said  to  have  paid 
Araunah  for  his  threshing-floor  fifty  shekels  of 
silver,  estimated  at  about  thirty  dollars  of  our 
money  ;  in    i    Chronicles  xxi.    25,  he  is  said  to 


152  WHO    WJWTE    THE  BIBLE? 

have  given  him  "  six  hundred  shekels  of  gold  by 
weight,"  amounting  to  a  little  more  than  thirty- 
four  hundred  dollars.  In  2  Chronicles  xiv.  i,  we 
read  that  Asa  reigned  in  the  stead  of  his  father 
Abijah,  and  that  in  his  days  the  land  was  quiet 
ten  years.  Again  in  the  loth  and  the  19th 
verses  of  the  following  chapter  we  learn  that 
from  the  fifteenth  to  the  thirty-fifth  year  of  Asa 
there  was  no  war  in  the  land.  In  i  Kings  xv. 
32,  we  are  explicitly  told  that  "there  was  war 
between  Asa  and  Baasha  king  of  Israel  all  their 
days."  In  I  Chronicles  xx.  the  story  of  the  tak- 
ing of  Rabbah  seems  to  be  abridged  from  2  Sam- 
uel xi.,  xii  ;  but  the  abridgment  is  curiously  done, 
so  that  the  part  taken  by  David  in  the  siege  and 
capture  of  the  city  is  not  brought  out  ;  and  the 
whole  narrative  of  David's  relation  to  Uriah  and 
Bathsheba,  with  the  rebuke  of  Nathan  and  the 
death  of  David's  child,  is  not  alluded  to.  The 
relation  of  the  two  narratives  at  this  point  is  sig- 
nificant ;  it  deserves  careful  study.  One  more 
curious  difference  is  found  in  the  two  accounts 
of  the  numbering  of  Israel.  In  2  Samuel  xxiv. 
I,  we  read,  **  And  the  anger  of  the  Lord  was 
kindled  against  Israel,  and  he  moved  David 
against  them,  saying.  Go,  number  Israel  and 
Judah."  In  i  Chronicles  xxi.,  we  read,  "And 
Satan  stood  up  against  Israel  and  moved  David 
to  number  Israel."  The  numbering  in  both  nar- 
ratives is  assumed  to  be  a  grievous  sin  ;  and  the 
penalty  of  this  sin,  which  was  David's,  was  vis- 


THE  LATER  HEBREW  HISTORIES.  I  53 

ited  upon  the  people  in  the  form  of  a  pestilence, 
which  slew  seventy  thousand  of  them.  I  observe 
that  the  commentators  try  to  reconcile  these 
statements  by  saying  that  God  permitted  Satan 
to  tempt  David.  I  wonder  if  that  explanation 
affords  to  any  mind  a  shade  of  relief.  But  the 
older  record  utterly  forbids  such  a  gloss.  '"'  The 
anger  of  the  Lord  against  Israel "  prompted  the 
Lord  to  **move  David  against  them,"  and  the 
Lord  said,  "  Go,  number  Judah  and  Israel  !  "  It 
was  not  a  permission  ;  it  was  a  direct  instiga- 
tion. Then  because  David  did  what  the  Lord 
moved  him  to  do,  **  the  Lord  sent  a  pestilence 
upon  Israel,"  which  destroyed  seventy  thousand 
men.  We  are  not  concerned  to  reconcile  these 
two  accounts,  for  neither  of  them  can  be  true. 
Let  us  not  suppose  that  we  can  be  required,  by 
any  theory  of  inspiration,  to  blaspheme  God  by 
accusing  him  of  any  such  monstrous  iniquity. 
Let  no  man  open  his  mouth  in  this  day  to  declare 
that  the  Judge  of  all  the  earth  instigated  David 
to  do  a  presumptuous  deed,  and  then  slew  seventy 
thousand  of  David's  subjects  for  the  sin  of  their 
ruler.  Such  a  view  of  God  might  have  been  held 
without  censure  three  thousand  years  ago  ;  it 
cannot  be  held  without  sin  by  men  who  have  the 
New  Testament  in  their  hands.  This  narrative 
belongs  to  that  class  of  crude  and  defective  teach- 
ings which  Jesus,  in  the  Sermon  on  the  Mount, 
points  out  and  sets  aside.  We  may,  nay  we  must 
apply  to  the  morality  of  this  transaction  the  prin- 


154  ^^^O    WROTE    THE  BIBLE? 

ciple  of  judgment  which  Jesus  gives  us  in  that 
discourse,  and  say  :  "  Ye  have  heard  that  it  hath 
been  said  by  them  of  old  time  that  God  some- 
times instigates  a  ruler  to  do  wrong,  and  then 
punishes  his  people  for  the  wrong  done  by  the 
ruler  which  he  himself  has  instigated  ;  but  I  say 
unto  you  that  *  God  cannot  be  tempted  with  evil, 
neither  tempteth  he  any  man  ; '  moreover  the 
ruler  shall  not  bear  the  sin  of  the  subject,  nor  the 
subject  the  sin  of  the  ruler;  for  every  man  shall 
give  account  of  himself  unto  God."  It  is  by  the 
higher  standard  that  Christ  has  given  us  in  the 
New  Testament  that  we  must  judge  all  these 
narratives  of  the  Old  Testament,  and  when  we 
find  in  these  old  writings  statements  which  rep- 
resent God  as  perfidious  and  unjust,  we  are  not 
to  try  to  "  harmonize  "  them  with  other  state- 
ments ;  we  are  simply  to  set  them  aside  as  the 
views  of  a  dark  age. 

Such  blurred  and  distorted  ideas  about  God 
and  his  truth  we  do  certainly  find  here  and  there 
in  these  old  writings  ;  the  treasure  which  they 
have  preserved  for  us  is  in  earthen  vessels ;  the 
human  element,  which  is  a  necessary  part  of  a 
written  revelation,  all  the  while  displays  itself. 
It  is  human  to  err  ;  and  the  men  who  wrote  the 
Bible  were  human.  We  may  have  a  theory  that 
God  must  have  guarded  them  from  every  form  of 
error,  but  the  Bible  itself  has  no  such  theory  ; 
and  we  must  try  to  make  our  theories  of  inspi- 
ration fit  the  facts  of  the  Bible  as  we  find  them 
lying  upon  its  pages. 


THE  LATER  HEBREW  HISTORIES.         I  55 

The  second  portion  of  this  history,  the  Book  of 
Ezra-Nehcniiah,  presents  fewer  of  these  difficul- 
ties than  the  Book  of  Chronicles.  It  is  a  frag- 
mentary, but  to  all  appearance  a  veracious  record 
of  the  events  which  took  place  after  the  first  re- 
turn of  the  exiles  to  Jerusalem.  The  first  caravan 
returned  in  the  first  year  of  King  Cyrus  ;  and 
the  history  extends  to  the  last  part  of  the  reign 
of  Artaxerxes  Longimanus,  —  covering  a  period 
of  more  than  a  hundred  years.  The  documents 
on  which  it  is  based  were  largely  official  ;  and 
there  is  no  doubt  that  considerable  portions  of 
the  first  book  came  from  the  pen  of  Ezra  himself, 
and  that  the  second  book  was  made  up  in  part 
from  writings  left  by  Nehemiah.  The  language 
of  the  second  book  is  Hebrew  ;  that  of  the  first 
is  partly  Hebrew  and  partly  Chaldee  or  Aramaic. 
We  read  in  the  fourth  chapter  of  Ezra  that  a  cer- 
tain letter  was  written  to  King  Artaxerxes,  and 
it  is  said  that  "  the  writing  of  the  letter  was  writ- 
ten in  the  Syrian  character."  The  margin  of  the 
revised  version  says  "Aramaic."  We  find  this 
letter  in  our  Hebrew  Bibles  in  the  Aramaic  lan- 
guage. And  the  writer,  after  copying  the  letter 
in  Aramaic,  goes  right  on  with  the  history  in 
Aramaic  ;  from  the  twelfth  verse  of  the  fourth 
chapter  to  the  eighteenth  verse  of  the  sixth  chap- 
ter the  language  is  all  Aramaic  ;  then  the  histo- 
rian drops  back  into  Hebrew  again,  and  goes  on 
to  the  twelfth  verse  of  the  seventh  chapter,  when 
he  returns  to  Aramaic   to  record  the  letter  of 


155  IVI/O    WROTE    THE  BIBLE? 

Artaxcrxes,  which  extends  to  the  twenty-sev^enth 
verse.  The  rest  of  the  book  is  Hebrew.  With 
the  exception  of  some  short  sections  of  the  Book 
of  Daniel,  this  is  the  only  portion  of  our  Old 
Testament  that  was  not  written  originally  in  the 
Hebrew  tongue. 

The  contents  of  these  two  books  may  be 
briefly  summarized.  The  first  book  tells  us  how 
the  Persian  king  Cyrus,  in  the  first  year  of  his 
reign,  issued  a  proclamation  to  the  Jews  dwelling 
in  his  kingdoi-i,  permitting  and  encouraging 
them  to  return  to  their  own  country  and  to  re- 
build the  temple  in  Jerusalem.  The  conquest  of 
the  Babylonians  by  the  Persians  had  placed  the 
captive  Jews  in  vastly  improved  circumstances. 
Between  the  faith  of  the  Persians  and  that  of  the 
Jews  there  was  close  afifinity.  The  Persians  were 
monotheists  ;  and  "  Cyrus,"  as  Rawlinson  says, 
'*  evidently  identified  Jehovah  with  Ormazd,  and, 
accepting  as  a  divine  command  the  prophecy  of 
Isaiah,  undertook  to  rebuild  their  temple  for  a 
people  who,  like  his  own,  allowed  no  image  of 
God  to  defile  the  sanctuary.  .  .  .  The  foundation 
was  then  laid  for  that  friendly  intimacy  between 
the  two  peoples  of  which  we  have  abundant  evi- 
dence in  the  books  of  Ezra,  Nehemiah,  and  Es- 
ther." The  words  of  the  decree  of  Cyrus,  with 
which  the  Book  of  Ezra  opens,  show  how  he  re- 
garded the  God  of  the  Jews  :  "  Whosoever  there 
is  among  you  of  all  his  people,  his  God  be  with 
him,  and  let  him  go  up  to  Jerusalem,  which  is  in 


THE   LATER   HEBREW  HISTORIES.         I  57 

Jiidah,  and  build  the  house  of  the  Lord,  the  God 
of  Israel,  (he  is  God,)  which  is  in  Jerusalem." 
The  parenthetical  clause  is  a  clear  confession  of 
the  faith  of  Cyrus  that  Jehovah  was  only  another 
name  for  Ormazd  ;  that  there  is  but  one  God. 

In  consequence  of  this  decree,  a  caravan  of 
nearly  fifty  thousand  persons,  led  by  Zerubbabel, 
carrying  with  them  liberal  free-will  offerings  of 
those  who  remained  in  Babylon  for  the  building 
of  the  temple,  went  back  to  Jerusalem,  and  in 
the  second  year  began  the  erection  of  the  second 
temple.  With  this  pious  design  certain  Samari- 
tans interfered,  finally  procuring  an  injunction 
from  the  successor  of  Cyrus  by  which  the  build- 
ing of  the  temple  was  interrupted  for  several 
years.  On  the  accession  of  Darius,  the  prophets 
Haggai  and  Zcchariah  stirred  up  the  people  to 
resume  the  work,  and  at  length  succeeded  in 
getting  from  the  great  king  complete  authority 
to  proceed  with  it.  In  the  sixth  year  of  his 
reign  the  second  temple  was  completed,  and 
dedicated  with  great  rejoicing.  This  closes  the 
first  section  of  the  Book  of  Ezra.  The  rest  of 
the  book  is  occupied  with  the  story  of  Ezra  him- 
self, who  is  said  to  have  been  **  a  ready  scribe  in 
the  law  of  Moses,"  and  who,  "  in  the  seventh  year 
of  Artaxerxes,  king  of  Persia,"  led  a  second  cara- 
van of  exiles  home  to  Jerusalem,  with  great  store 
of  silver  and  gold  and  wheat  and  wine  and  oil 
for  the  resumption  of  the  ritual  worship  of  the 
Lord's  house.     The  story  of  this  return  of  the 


158  IV/IO    WROTE    THE   BIBLE? 

exiles  is  minutely  told  ;  and  the  remainder  of 
this  book  is  devoted  to  a  recital  of  the  matter 
of  the  mixed  marriages  between  the  Jewish  men 
and  the  women  of  the  surrounding  tribes,  which 
caused  Ezra  great  distress,  and  which  he  suc- 
ceeded in  annulling,  so  that  these  "strange  wo- 
men," as  they  are  called,  were  all  put  away.  To 
our  eyes  this  seems  a  piece  of  doubtful  morality, 
but  we  must  consider  the  changed  standards  of 
our  time,  and  remember  that  these  men  might 
have  done  with  the  purest  conscientiousness 
some  things  which  we  could  not  do  at  all. 

The  Book  of  Nehemiah  is  in  part  a  recital 
by  Nehemiah  himself  of  the  circumstances  of 
his  coming  to  Jerusalem,  which  seems  to  have 
taken  place  about  thirteen  years  after  the  com- 
ing of  Ezra.  He  was  the  cupbearer  of  Arta- 
xerxes  the  king  ;  he  had  heard  of  the  distress 
and  poverty  of  his  people  at  Jerusalem,  and  in 
the  fervid  patriotism  of  his  nature  he  begged 
the  privilege  of  going  up  to  Jerusalem  to  re- 
build its  walls.  Permission  was  gained,  and  the 
first  part  of  the  book  contains  a  stirring  account 
of  the  experiences  of  Nehemiah  in  building  the 
walls  of  Jerusalem.  After  this  work  was  fin- 
ished, Nehemiah  undertook  a  census  of  the  re- 
stored city,  but  he  found,  as  he  says,  "the  book 
of  the  genealogy  of  them  that  came  up  at  the 
first,"  —  the  list  of  families  which  appears  in 
Ezra,  —  and  this  he  copies.  It  may  be  instructive 
to  take  these  two  lists  —  the  one  in  Ezra  ii.  and 


rilE   LATER   IIEEKEW  IIISTOKIKS.         I  59 

the  one  in  Ncbcmiah  vii.  —  and  compare  them. 
After  this  we  have  an  account  of  a  great  congre- 
gation which  assembled  "  in  the  broad  place  that 
was  before  the  water  gate,"  when  Ezra  the  scribe 
stood  upon  "a  pulpit  of  wood"  from  early  morn- 
ing until  midday,  and  read  to  the  assembled  mul- 
titude from  the  book  of  the  law.  "And  Ezra 
opened  the  book  in  the  sight  of  all  the  people 
(for  he  was  above  all  the  people)  ;  and  when  he 
opened  it  all  the  people  stood  up,  and  Ezra 
blessed  Jehovah  the  great  God.  And  all  the 
people  answered,  Amen,  Amen,  with  the  lifting 
up  of  their  hands  ;  and  they  bowed  their  heads, 
and  worshiped  Jehovah,  with  their  faces  to  the 
ground."  Other  scribes  stood  by,  apparently  to 
take  turns  in  the  reading  ;  and  it  is  said  that 
"they  read  in  the  book,  in  the  law  of  the  Lord  dis- 
tinctly [or,  "  with  an  interpretation,"  Marg.],  and 
they  gave  the  sense,  so  that  they  understood  the 
reading."  Erom  this  it  has  been  inferred  that 
the  people  had  already  become,  in  their  sojourn 
in  the  East,  more  familiar  with  Aramaic  than 
with  their  own  tongue,  and  that  they  were  un- 
able to  understand  the  Hebrew  without  some 
words  of  interpretation.  It  is  doubtful,  however, 
whether  all  this  meaning  can  be  read  into  this 
passage.  At  any  rate,  we  have  here,  undoubt- 
edly, the  history  of  the  inauguration  of  the  read- 
ing of  the  law  as  one  of  the  regular  acts  of 
public  worship.  And  this  must  have  been  about 
440  B.  c. 


l6o  IV//0    WROTE    THE  BIBLE? 

The  narrative  of  the  first  complete  and  formal 
observance  of  the  Feast  of  Tabernacles  since  the 
days  of  Joshua;  the  narrative  of  the  solemn 
league  and  covenant  by  which  the  people  bound 
themselves  to  keep  the  law  ;  the  narrative  of  the 
dedication  of  the  wall  of  the  city,  and  the  account 
of  various  reforms  which  Nehemiah  prosecuted, 
with  certain  lists  of  priests  and  Levites,  fill  up  the 
remainder  of  the  book. 

Taking  it  all  in  all  it  is  a  very  valuable  record ; 
no  historical  book  of  the  Old  Testament  gives 
greater  evidence  of  veracity  ;  none  excels  it  in 
human  interest.  The  pathetic  tale  of  the  return 
of  this  people  from  their  long  exile,  of  the  re- 
building of  their  city  and  their  temple,  and  of  the 
heroic  and  self-denying  labors  of  Zerubbabel  and 
Nehemiah,  the  governors,  and  Haggai  and  Zecha- 
riah,  the  prophets,  and  Ezra  the  scribe,  with  all 
their  coadjutors,  is  full  of  significance  to  all  those 
who  trace  in  the  history  of  the  people  of  Israel, 
more  clearly  than  anywhere  else,  the  increasing 
purpose  of  God  which  runs  through  all  the  ages. 

That  portions  of  the  first  book  were  written  by 
Ezra,  and  of  the  second  book  by  Nehemiah,  is  not 
doubted ;  but  both  books  were  revised  somewhat 
by  later  hands  ;  additions  were  undoubtedly  made 
after  the  death  of  Nehemiah  ;  for  one,  at  least, 
of  the  genealogies  shows  us  a  certain  Jaddua  as 
high. priest,  and  tells  us  that  he  was  the  great 
grandson  of  the  man  who  was  high  priest  when 
Nehemiah  came  to  Jerusalem.     It  is  not  proba- 


THE  LATER  HEBREW  HISTORIES.       l6l 

blc  that  Nebemiah  lived  to  sec  this  Jaddua  in 
the  high  priest's  office.  It  is  probable  that  the 
last  revision  of  the  Bible  was  made  some  time 
after  400  b.  c. 

I  have  now  to  speak,  in  the  conclusion  of  this 
chapter,  of  two  other  books  of  this  last  group, 
concerning  which  there  has  always  been  much 
misconception,  the  Book  of  Esther  and  the  Book 
of  Daniel.  Esther  stands  in  our  Bibles  immedi- 
ately after  Ezra-Nehemiah,  while  Daniel  is  in- 
cluded among  the  prophets.  But  in  the  Hebrew 
Bibles  both  books  are  found  in  the  group  which 
was  last  collected  and  least  valued. 

I  have  styled  these  historical  books  ;  are  they 
truly  historical  ?  That  they  are  founded  upon 
fact  I  do  not  doubt  ;  but  it  is,  perhaps,  safer  to 
recrard  them  both  rather  as  historical  fictions 
than  as  veritable  histories.  The  reason  for  this 
judgment  may  appear  as  we  go  on  with  the  study. 

The  Book  of  Esther  may  be  briefly  summa- 
rized. The  scene  is  laid  in  Sbushan  the  palace, 
better  known  as  Susa,  one  of  the  royal  residences 
of  the  kings  of  Persia.  The  story  opens  with  a 
great  feast,  lasting  one  hundred  and  eighty  days, 
given  by  the  King  Ahasuerus  *to  all  the  nabobs 
of  the  realm.  It  is  assumed  that  this  king  was 
Xerxes  the  Great,  but  the  identification  is  by  no 
means  conclusive.  At  the  close  of  this  monu- 
mental debauch,  the  king,  in  his  drunken  pride, 
calls  in  his  queen  Vashti  to  show  her  beauty  to 
the  inebriated  courtiers.     She  refuses,  and    the 


l62  W//0    WROTE    THE   BIBLE? 

refusal  ought  to  be  remembered  to  her  honor  ; 
but  this  book  does  not  so  regard  it.  The  sympa- 
thy of  the  book  is  with  the  bibulous  monarch, 
and  not  with  his  chaste  and  modest  spouse. 
The  king  is  very  wroth,  and  after  taking  much 
learned  advice  from  his  counselors,  puts  away  his 
queen  for  this  act  of  insubordination,  and  pro- 
ceeds to  look  for  another.  His  choice  falls  upon 
a  Jewish  maiden,  a  daughter  of  the  Exile,  who  has 
been  brought  up  by  her  cousin  Mordecai.  Esther, 
at  Mordecai's  command,  at  first  conceals  her  Jew- 
ish descent  from  the  king.  An  opportunity  soon 
comes  for  Mordecai  to  reveal  to  Esther  a  plot 
against  the  king's  life  ;  and  the  circumstance  is 
recorded  in  the  chronicles  of  the  realm. 

Soon  after  this  a  certain  Haman  is  made  Grand 
Vizier  of  the  kingdom,  and  Mordecai  the  Jew  re- 
fuses to  do  obeisance  to  him  ;  in  consequence 
of  which  Haman  secures  from  the  king  an  edict 
ordering  the  assassination  of  all  the  Jews  in  the 
kingdom.  His  wrath  against  Mordecai  being  still 
further  inflamed,  he  erects  a  gallows  fifty  cubits 
high,  with  the  purpose  of  hanging  thereon  the 
testy  Israelite.  The  intervention  of  Esther  puts 
an  end  to  these  malicious  schemes.  At  the  risk 
of  her  life  she  presents  herself  before  the  king, 
and  gains  his  favor  ;  then,  while  Haman's  pur- 
pose halts,  the  king  is  reminded,  when  the  annals 
of  his  kinsfdom  are  read  to  him  on  a  wakeful 
night,  of  the  frustration  of  the  plot  against  his 
person  by  Mordecai,  and  learning  that  no  recom- 


THE   LATER   HEBREW  HISTORIES.  1 63 

pensc  has  been  made  to  him,  suddenly  deter- 
mines to  elevate  and  honor  him  ;  and  the  con- 
sequence is,  that  Haman  himself,  his  purposes 
being  disclosed  by  the  queen,  is  hanged  on  the 
gallows  that  he  had  prepared  for  Mordecai,  and 
Mordecai  is  elevated  to  Haman's  place.  The 
decree  of  an  Eastern  king  cannot  be  annulled, 
and  the  massacre  of  the  Jews  still  remains  a  legal 
requirement ;  yet  Esther  and  Mordecai  are  per- 
mitted to  send  royal  orders  to  all  parts  of  the 
realm  authorizing  the  Jews  upon  the  day  of  the 
appointed  massacre  to  stand  for  their  Hves,  and 
to  kill  as  many  as  they  can  of  their  enemies. 
Thus  encouraged,  and  supported  also  by  the 
king's  officials  in  every  province,  who  are  now 
the  creatures  of  Mordecai,  the  Jews  turn  upon 
their  enemies,  and  slay  in  one  day  seventy-five 
thousand  of  them,  —  five  hundred  in  the  palace 
of  Shushan,  —  among  whom  are  the  ten  sons  of 
Haman.  On  the  evening  of  this  bloody  day,  the 
king  says  to  Esther  the  queen :  "The  Jews  have 
slain  five  hundred  men  in  Shushan  the  palace,  and 
the  ten  sons  of  Haman  ;  what  then  have  they 
done  in  the  rest  of  the  king's  provinces }  [From 
this  sample  of  their  ferocity  you  can  judge  how 
much  blood  must  have  been  shed  throughout  the 
kingdom.]  Now  what  is  thy  petition  }  and  it 
shall  be  granted  thee  ;  or  what  is  thy  request  fur- 
ther.? and  it  shall  be  done."  It  might  be  sup- 
posed that  this  fair  Jewish  princess  would  be  sat- 
isfied with  this  banquet  of  blood,  but  she  is  not  ; 


164  ^1^0    WROTE    THE   BIBLE? 

she  wants  more.  "Then  said  Esther,  if  it  please 
the  king,  let  it  be  granted  to  the  Jews  which 
are  in  Shushan  to  do  to-morrow  also,  according 
unto  this  day's  decree,  and  let  Haman's  ten  sons 
be  hanged  upon  the  gallows."  The  request  is 
granted ;  the  next  day  three  hundred  more  Per- 
sians are  butchered  in  Shushan  the  palace ;  and 
the  dead  bodies  of  the  ten  sons  of  Haman,  wel- 
tering in  their  gore,  are  lifted  up  and  hanged 
upon  the  gallows,  and  all  to  please  Queen  Es- 
ther !  If  a  single  Jew  loses  his  life  in  this  out- 
break, the  writer  forgets  to  mention  it.  It  is  idle 
to  say  that  this  is  represented  as  a  defensive  act 
on  the  part  of  the  Jews  ;  the  impression  is  given 
that  the  Persians,  by  the  menacing  action  of 
their  own  officials  under  Mordecai's  authority, 
were  completely  cowed,  and  were  simply  slaugh- 
tered in  their  tracks  by  the  infuriated  Jews. 

As  a  memorial  of  this  feast  of  blood,  the  Jew- 
ish festival  of  Purim  was  instituted,  which  is  kept 
to  this  day ;  and  the  Book  of  Esther  is  read  at 
this  feast,  in  dramatic  fashion,  with  passionate  re- 
sponses by  the  congregation. 

Is  this  history  }  There  is  every  reason  to  hope 
that  it  is  not.  That  some  deliverance  of  the  Jews 
from  their  enemies  in  Persia  may  be  commemo- 
rated by  the  feast  of  Purim  is  possible ;  that  pre- 
cisely such  a  fiendish  outbreak  of  fanatical  cru- 
elty as  this  ever  occurred,  we  may  safely  and 
charitably  doubt.  The  fact  that  the  story  was 
told,  and  that  it  gained  great  popularity  among 


THE  LATER  HEBREW  HISTORIES.         165 

the  Jews,  and  by  some  of  those  in  later  ages 
came  to  be  regarded  as  one  of  the  most  sacred 
books  of  their  canon  is,  however,  a  revelation  to 
us  of  the  extent  to  which  the  most  baleful  and 
horrible  passions  may  be  cherished  in  the  name 
of  religion.  It  is  precisely  for  this  purpose,  per- 
haps, that  the  book  has  been  preserved  in  our 
canon.  If  any  one  wishes  to  see  the  perfect  an- 
tithesis of  the  precepts  and  the  spirit  of  the  gos- 
pel of  Christ,  let  him  read  the  Book  of  Esther. 
Frederick  Blcek  is  entirely  justified  in  his  state- 
ment that  "a  spirit  of  revenge  and  persecution 
prevails  in  the  book,  and  that  no  other  book  of 
the  Old  Testament  is  so  far  removed  as  this  is 
from  the  spirit  of  the  gospel."  ^  For  it  is  not 
merely  true  that  these  atrocities  are  here  recited ; 
they  are  clearly  indorsed.  There  is  not  a  word 
said  in  deprecation  of  the  beastliness  of  the  king 
or  the  vindictiveness  of  the  hero  and  the  heroine. 
It  is  clear,  as  Bleek  says,  "that  the  author  finds 
a  peculiar  satisfaction  in  the  characters  and  mode 
of  acting  of  his  Jewish  compatriots,  Esther  and 
Mordecai ;  and  that  the  disposition  shown  by 
them  appears  to  him  as  the  right  one,  and  one 
worthy  of  their  nation."  "Esther  the  beautiful 
queen,"  whose  praises  have  been  sung  by  many 
of  our  poets,  possesses,  indeed,  some  admirable 
qualities  ;  her  courage  is  illustrious  ;  her  patriot- 
ism is  beautiful ;  but  her  bloodthirstiness  is  terri- 
ble. 

1  I)Urodiictioii  to  the  Old  Testanicut^  i.  450. 


1 66  JVI/O    WROTE    THE  BIBLE? 

As  to  the  time  when  this  book  was  written,  or 
who  wrote  it,  I  am  not  curious.  Probably  it  was 
written  long  after  the  Exile,  but  by  some  one  who 
was  somewhat  familiar  with  the  manners  of  Ori- 
ental courts.  The  name  of  God  is  not  once  men- 
tioned in  the  book ;  and  it  seems  like  blasphemy 
to  intimate  that  the  Spirit  of  God  could  have  had 
anything  to  do  with  its  composition.  It  is  abso- 
lutely sickening  to  read  the  commentaries,  which 
assume  that  it  was  dictated  by  the  Holy  Ghost, 
and  which  labor  to  justify  and  palliate  its  fright- 
ful narrative.  One  learns,  with  a  sense  of  re- 
lief, that  the  Jews  themselves  long  disputed  its 
admission  to  their  canon  ;  that  the  school  of 
Schammai  would  not  accept  it,  and  that  several 
of  the  wisest  and  best  of  the  early  fathers  of  the 
Christian  church,  Athanasius  and  Melito  of  Sar- 
dis  among  the  rest,  denied  it  a  place  in  sacred 
Scripture.  Dr.  Martin  Luther  is  orthodox  enough 
for  me,  and  he,  more  than  once,  expressed  the 
hearty  wish  that  the  book  had  perished.  .  That, 
indeed,  we  need  not  desire ;  let  it  remain  as  a 
dark  background  on  which  the  Christian  morality 
may  stand  forth  resplendent ;  as  a  striking  ex- 
ample of  the  kind  of  ideas  which  Christians  ought 
not  to  entertain,  and  of  the  kind  of  feelings  which 
they  ought  not  to  cherish. 

The  Book  of  Daniel  brings  us  into  a  very  dif- 
ferent atmosphere.  Esther  is  absolutely  barren 
of  religious  ideas  or  suggestions  ;  Daniel  is  full 
of  the  spirit  of  faith  and  prayer.     Whether  the 


THE   LATER   HEBREW  HISTORIES.         1 6/ 

character  of  Daniel,  as  here  presented,  is  a  sketch 
from  life  or  a  work  of  the  imagination,  it  is  a 
noble  personality.  The  self-control,  the  fidelity 
to  conscience,  the  heroic  purposes  which  are 
here  attributed  to  him,  make  up  a  picture  which 
has  always  attracted  the  admiration  of  generous 
hearts. 

"  As  in  the  story  of  the  Three  Children,"  says 
Dean  Stanley,  "  so  in  that  of  the  Den  of  Lions, 
the  element  which  has  lived  on  with  immortal 
vigor  is  that  which  tells  how,  '  when  Daniel  knew 
that  the  writing  was  signed,  he  kneeled  upon  his 
knees  three  times  a  day  and  prayed  and  gave 
thanks  to  God,  as  he  did  aforetime/  How  often 
have  these  words  confirmed  the  solitary  protest, 
not  only  in  the  Flavian  amphitheatre,  but  in  the 
ordinary  yet  not  more  easy  task  of  maintaining 
the  right  of  conscience  against  arbitrary  power 
or  invidious  insult !  How  many  an  independent 
patriot  or  unpopular  reformer  has  been  nerved 
by  them  to  resist  the  unreasonable  commands  of 
king  or  priest !  How  many  a  little  boy  at  school 
has  been  strengthened  by  them  for  the  effort, 
when  he  has  knelt  down  by  his  bedside  for  the 
first  time  to  say  his  prayers  in  the  presence  of 
indifferent  or  scoffing  companions.  .  .  .  Shadrach, 
Meshach,  and  Abednego  in  the  court  of  Ne- 
buchadnezzar, Daniel  in  the  court  of  Darius,  are 
the  likenesses  of  'the  small  transfigured  band 
whom  the  world  cannot  tame,'  who,  by  faith  in 
the    Unseen,   have    in    every   age    '  stopped    the 


1 68  IV//0    WROTE    THE  BIBLE? 

mouths  of  lions,  and  quenched  the  violence  of 
fire.'  This  was  the  example  to  those  on  whom, 
in  all  ages,  in  spirit  if  not  in  letter,  '  the  fire  had 
no  power,  nor  was  an  hair  of  their  head  singed, 
neither  were  their  coats  changed,  nor  the  smell  of 
fire  passed  upon  them  ; '  but  it  was  '  as  it  were  a 
moist,  whistling  wind,  and  the  form  of  the  fourth, 
who  walked  with  them  in  the  midst  of  the  fire, 
was  like  a  Son  of  God.'  "  ^ 

Was  Daniel  a  historical  person  ?  The  question 
has  been  much  disputed,  but  I  think  that  we  may 
safely  answer  it  in  the  affirmative.  It  is  true 
that  in  all  these  writings  of  the  later  period  of 
Israel  Daniel  is  mentioned  but  twice,  both  times 
in  the  Book  of  Ezekiel  (xiv.  14  ;  xxviii.  3).  The 
first  of  these  allusions  is  a  declaration  that  a  few 
righteous  men  cannot  save  a  wicked  city,  when 
the  decree  of  destruction  against  it  has  been 
issued;  "though  these  three  men,  Noah,  Daniel, 
and  Job  were  in  it,  they  should  deliver  but  their 
own  souls  by  their  righteousness,  saith  the  Lord 
God."  The  other  is  in  a  prophecy  against  the 
King  of  Tyre,  in  which  he  is  represented  as  say- 
ing to  himself  that  he  is  wiser  than  Daniel  ;  that 
there  is  no  secret  that  can  be  hidden  from  him. 
Whether  these  casual  uses  of  the  name  of  Daniel 
for  purposes  of  illustration  can  be  regarded  as 
establishing  his  historical  character  may  be  ques- 
tioned. And  it  is  a  singular  fact  that  we  have 
not  in  Ezra,  or  Nehemiah,  or  Haggai,  or  Zecha- 

1  History  of  the  Jewish  Church,  pp.  .^i,  42. 


THE  LATER  HEBREW  HISTORIES.         169 

riab,  or  JMalachi,  any  reference  to  the  existence 
of  Daniel.  Nevertheless,  it  is  hardly  to  be  sup- 
posed that  such  a  character  was  wholly  fictitious  ; 
we  may  well  suppose  that  he  existed,  and  that 
the  narratives  of  his  great  fidelity  and  piety  are 
at  any  rate  founded  upon  fact. 

The    first   six   chapters  of   the    book  are   not 
ascribed  to  Daniel  as  their  author  ;  he  is  spoken 
of  in  the  third  person,  and  sometimes  in  a  way 
that  a  good  man  would  not  be  likely  to  speak 
about  himself.    The  remainder  of  the  book  claims 
to  be  written  by  him.     The  question  is  whether 
this  claim  is  to  be  taken  as  an  assertion  of  his- 
torical fact,  or  as  a  device  of  literary  workman- 
ship.    Ecclesiastes  was  undoubtedly  written  long 
after  the  Exile,  yet  it  purports  to  have  been  com- 
posed by  King  Solomon.     The  author  puts  his 
words  into  the  mouth  of  Solomon,  to  gain  atten- 
tion for  them.     It  is  not  fair  to  call  this  a  fraud  ; 
it  was  a  perfectly  legitimate  literary  device.     It 
is  entirely  possible  that  this  may  be  the  case  with 
the  author  of  this  book.     Daniel  was  a  person 
whose  name  was  well-known  among  his  contem- 
poraries, and  the  author  makes  him  his  mouth- 
piece.    There  may  have   been   a  special  reason 
why  the  author  should  have  desired  to  send  out 
these  narratives  and  visions  under  the  name  of  a 
hero  of  antiquity,  a  reason  which  we  shall  pres- 
ently discover. 

The  Book  of  Daniel  is  not  what  is  commonly 
called  a  prophecy  ;  it  is  rather  an  apocalypse.     It 


1 70  IVIIO    WROTE    THE  BIBLE? 

belongs  to  a  class  of  literature  which  sprang  up 
in  the  last  days  of  the  Jewish  nationality,  after 
the  old  prophets  had  disappeared  ;  it  is  designed 
to  comfort  the  people  with  hopes  of  future  res- 
toration of  the  national  power;  its  method  is  that 
of  vision  and  symbolic  representation.  Daniel 
is  the  only  book  of  this  kind  in  the  Old  Testa- 
ment ;  the  New  Testament  canon  closes,  as  you 
know,  with  a  similar  book.  I  shall  not  undertake 
to  interpret  to  you  these  visions  of  the  Book  of 
Daniel ;  they  are  confessedly  obscure  and  mys- 
terious. But  there  is  one  portion  of  the  book, 
the  eleventh  chapter,  which  is  admitted  to  be  a 
minute  and  realistic  description  of  the  coalitions 
and  the  conflicts  between  the  Graeco-Syrian  and 
the  Graeco-Egyptian  kings,  events  which  took 
place  about  the  middle  of  the  second  century 
before  Christ.  These  personages  are  not  named, 
but  they  are  vividly  described,  and  the  intrigues 
and  vicissitudes  of  that  portion  of  Jewish  history 
in  which  they  are  the  chief  actors  are  fully  told. 
Moreover  the  recital  is  put  in  the  future  tense  ; 
*'  There  shall  stand  up  yet  three  kings  in  Persia  ; 
and  the  fourth  shall  be  richer  than  they  all ;  and 
when  he  is  waxed  strong  through  his  riches,  he 
shall  stir  up  all  against  the  realm  of  Greece." 

If,  now,  the  Book  of  Daniel  was  written  in  the 
early  days  of  the  Exile,  this  was  a  very  circum- 
stantial prediction  of  what  happened  in  the  sec- 
ond century,  —  a  prediction  uttered  three  hun- 
dred years  before  the  event.      And   respecting 


THE  LATER  HEBREW  HISTOR I ES.  1 71 

these  predictions,  if  such  they  are,  we  must  say 
this,  that  we  have  no  others  like  them.  The 
other  prophets  never  undertake  to  tell  the  par- 
ticulars of  what  is  coming  to  pass  ;  they  give  out, 
in  terms  very  large  and  general,  the  nature  of 
the  events  which  are  to  come.  No  such  carefully 
elaborated  programme  as  this  is  found  in  any- 
other  predictive  utterance. 

But  there  are  those  —  and  they  include  the 
vast  majority  of  the  leading  Christian  scholars  of 
the  present  day  —  who  say  that  these  words 
were  not  written  in  the  early  days  of  the  Exile  ; 
that  they  must  have  been  written  about  the  mid- 
dle of  the  second  century  ;  that  they  were  there- 
fore an  account  of  what  was  going  on,  by  an  on- 
looker, couched  in  these  phrases  of  vision  and 
prophecy.  The  people  of  Israel  were  passing 
through  a  terrible  ordeal ;  they  needed  to  be 
heartened  and  nerved  for  resistance  and  endur- 
ance. Their  heroic  leader,  Judas  Maccabeus,  was 
urging  them  on  to  prodigies  of  valor  in  their  con- 
flict with  the  vile  Antiochus ;  such  a  ringing 
manifesto  as  this,  put  forth  in  the  progress  of  the 
conflict,  might  have  a  powerful  influence  in  re- 
inforcing their  patriotism  and  confirming  their 
faith.  It  might  also  have  appeared  at  some  stage 
of  the  conflict  when  it  would  have  been  impru- 
dent and  perhaps  impossible  to  secure  currency 
for  the  book  if  the  reference  to  existing  rulers  had 
been  explicit ;  such  a  device  as  the  author  adopted 
may  have  been  perfectly  understood  by  the  read- 


172  IVIIO    WROTE   THE   BIBLE? 

ers  ;  although  slightly  veiled  in  the  form  of  its 
deliverance,  it  was,  perhaps,  for  this  very  reason, 
all  the  better  fitted  for  its  purpose. 

It  might,  then,  have  been  written  when  the 
Ptolemies  and  the  Seleucidae  were  wasting  the 
fields  of  Palestine  with  their  conflicts.  But  was 
it  written  then  ?  How  do  we  know  that  it  was 
not  a  circumstantial  prediction  made  three  hun- 
dred years  before  ?  We  do  not  know,  with  abso- 
lute certainty,  when  it  was  written  ;  but  there 
are  strong  reasons  for  believing  that  the  later 
date  is  the  true  date. 

1.  The  book  is  not  in  the  Hebrew  collection  of 
the  Prophets.  That  collection  was  made  at  least 
a  hundred  years  after  the  time  at  which  Daniel 
is  here  said  to  have  lived  ;  if  so  great  a  prophecy 
had  been  existing  then,  it  is  strange  that  it  should 
not  have  been  gathered  with  the  other  prophets 
into  Nehemiah's  collection.  It  is  found,  instead, 
among  the  Ketubim,  —  the  later  and  supplemen- 
tary writings  of  the  Hebrew  Bible. 

2.  It  is  strange  also,  as  I  have  intimated,  that 
no  mention  of  Daniel  or  of  his  book  is  found  in 
the  histories  of  the  Exile  and  the  return,  or  in 
any  of  the  prophecies  uttered  in  Israel  after  the 
return.  That  there  should  be  no  allusion  in  any 
of  these  books  to  so  distinguished  a  personage 
can  hardly  be  explained. 

3.  Jesus,  the  son  of  Sirach,  one  of  the  writers 
of  the  Apocrypha,  who  lived  about  200  b.  c, 
gives  a  full  catalogue  of  all  the  great  worthies  of 


THE  LATER  HEBREW  HISTORIES.         1 73 

Israel ;  he  has  a  hst  of  the  prophets  ;  he  names 
all  the  other  prophets ;  he  does  not  name  Daniel. 

4.  The  nature  of  this  prediction,  if  it  be  a  pre- 
diction, is  unaccountable.  Daniel  is  said  to  have 
lived  in  the  Babylonian  period,  and  looked  for- 
ward from  that  day.  His  people  were  in  exile, 
but  there  is  not  a  vision  of  his  that  has  any  ref- 
erence to  their  return  from  the  captivity,  to  the 
rebuilding  of  the  temple,  or  to  any  of  the  events 
of  their  history  belonging  to  the  two  centuries 
following.  It  is  strange  that  if,  standing  at  that 
point  of  time,  he  was  inspired  to  predict  the  fu- 
ture of  the  Jewish  people,  he  should  not  have 
had  some  message  respecting  those  great  events 
in  their  history  which  were  to  happen  within  the 
next  century.  Instead  of  this,  his  visions,  so  far 
as  his  own  people  are  concerned,  overleap  three 
centuries  and  land  in  the  days  of  Antiochus  Epi- 
phanes.  Here  they  begin  at  once  to  be  very 
specific  ;  they  tell  all  the  particulars  of  this  pe- 
riod, but  beyond  this  period  they  give  no  partic- 
ulars at  all ;  the  vision  of  the  Messianic  triumph 
which  follows  is  vague  and  general  like  the  rest 
of  the  prophecies.  These  circumstances  strongly 
support  the  theory  of  the  later  date. 

5.  Words  appear  in  this  writing  which  almost 
certainly  fix  it  at  a  later  date  than  the  Babylo- 
nian period.  There  are  certainly  nine  undoubted 
Persian  words  in  this  book  ;  there  are  no  Persian 
words  in  Ezekiel,  who  lived  at  the  time  when 
Daniel  is  placed  at  the  Babylonian  court,  nor  in 


1/4  ^^^^O    IVROTE    THE  BIBLE? 

Haggai,  Zechariah,  or  Malachi.  There  are  sev- 
eral Greek  words,  names  of  musical  instruments, 
and  it  is  almost  certain  that  no  Greek  words  were 
in  use  in  Babylonia  at  that  early  day.  This  phil- 
ological argument  may  seem  very  dubious  and 
far-fetched,  but  it  is  really  one  of  the  most  con- 
clusive tests  of  the  date  of  a  document.  There 
is  no  witness  so  competent  as  the  written  word. 
Let  me  give  you  a  homely  illustration.  Suppose 
you  find  in  some  late  history  of  the  United  States 
a  quoted  letter  said  to  have  been  written  by 
President  Zachary  Taylor,  who  died  in  1850,  re- 
specting a  certain  political  contest.  The  letter 
contains  the  following  paragraph  :  — 

^'  On  receiving  this  intelligence,  I  called  up 
the  Secretary  of  State  by  telephone,  and  asked 
him  how  he  explained  the  defeat.  He  told  me 
that,  in  his  opinion,  boodle  was  at  the  bottom  of 
it.  I  determined  to  make  an  investigation,  and 
after  wiring  to  the  member  of  Congress  in  that 
district,  I  ordered  my  servant  to  engage  me  a 
section  in  a  Pullman  car,  and  started  the  same 
night  for  the  scene  of  the  contest." 

Now  of  course  you  know  that  this  paragraph 
could  not  have  been  written  by  President  Tay- 
lor, nor  during  the  period  of  his  administration. 
The  telephone  was  not  then  in  existence  ;  there 
were  no  Pullman  cars  ;  the  words  "boodle"  and 
**  wire,"  in  the  sense  here  used,  had  never  been 
heard.  In  precisely  the  same  way  the  trained 
philologist  can  often   determine  with  great  cer- 


THE   LATER  HEBREW  HISTORIES.         1 75 

tainty  the  date  of  a  writing.  He  knows  the  biog- 
raphy of  words  or  word-forms  ;  and  he  may  know 
that  some  of  the  words  or  the  word-forms  con- 
tained in  a  certain  writing  were  not  yet  in  the 
language  at  the  date  when  it  is  said  to  have  been 
written.  It  is  by  evidence  of  this  nature  that 
the  critics  fix  the  date  of  the  Book  of  Daniel  at  a 
period  long  after  the  close  of  the  Babylonian  em- 
pire. 

This  verdict  reduces,  somewhat,  the  element 
of  the  marvelous  contained  in  the  book  ;  it  does 
not  in  any  wise  reduce  the  moral  and  spiritual 
value  of  it.  The  age  of  the  Maccabees,  when  this 
book  appeared,  was  one  of  the  great  ages  of  Jew- 
ish history.  Judas  Maccabeus  is  one  of  the  first 
of  the  Israelitish  heroes ;  and  the  struggle,  in 
which  he  was  the  leader,  against  the  dissolute 
Syrian  Greeks  brought  out  some  of  the  strong- 
est qualities  of  the  Hebrew  character.  The  gen- 
uine humility,  the  fervid  consecration,  the  daunt- 
less faith  of  the  Jews  of  this  generation  put  to 
shame  the  conduct  of  their  countrymen  in  many 
ages  more  celebrated.  And  ft  cannot  be  doubted 
that  this  book  was  both  the  effect  and  the  cause 
of  this  lofty  national  purpose.  **  Rarely,"  says 
Ewald,  "  does  it  happen  that  a  book  appears  as 
this  did,  in  the  very  crisis  of  the  times,  and  in  a 
form  most  suited  to  such  an  age,  artificially  re- 
served, close  and  severe,  and  yet  shedding  so 
clear  a  light  through  obscurity,  and  so  marvel- 
ously  captivating.     It  was  natural  that  it  should 


176  WHO    WROTE    THE   BIBLE? 

goon  achieve  a  success  entirely  corresponding  to 
its  inner  truth  and  glory.  And  so,  for  the  last 
time  in  the  literature  of  the  Old  Testament,  we 
have  in  this  book  an  example  of  a  work  which, 
having  sprung  from  the  deepest  necessities  of 
the  noblest  impulses  of  the  age,  can  render  to 
that  age  the  purest  service  ;  and  which,  by  the 
development  of  events  immediately  after,  receives 
with  such  power  the  stamp  of  Divine  witness 
that  it  subsequently  attains  imperishable  sanc- 
tity." 1 

1  Quoted  by  Stanley,  History  of  the  Jewish  Church,  iii.  p.  336. 


CHAPTER   VII. 

THE    POETICAL    BOOKS, 

The  poetical  books  of  the  Old  Testament  now 
invite  our  attention,  —  "The  Lamentations," 
"Proverbs,"  "  Ecclesiastes,"  "The  Song  of  Solo- 
mon," "Job,"  and  "The  Psalms."  Ecclesiastes 
is  not  in  poetical  form,  but  it  is  a  prose  poem  ; 
the  movement  of  the  language  is  often  lyrical, 
and  the  thought  is  all  expressed  in  poetic  phrases. 
The  other  books  are  all  poetical  in  form  as  well 
as  in  fact. 

Lamentations,  called  in  the  Hebrew  Bible  by 
the  quaint  title  "  Ah  How,"  the  first  two  words 
of  the  book,  and  in  the  Greek  Bible  "  Threnoi," 
signifying  mourning,  is  placed  in  the  middle  of 
the  latest  group  of  the  Hebrew  writings.  In  the 
English  Bible  it  follows  the  prophecy  of  Jeremiah. 
It  is  called  in  our  version  "  The  Lamentations  of 
Jeremiah."  This  title  preserves  the  ancient  tra- 
dition, and  there  is  no  reason  to  doubt  that  the 
tradition  embodies  the  truth.  "  In  favor  of  this 
opinion,"  says  Bleek,  "we  may  note  the  agree- 
ment of  the  songs  with  Jeremiah's  prophecies  in 
their  whole  character  and  spirit,  in  their  purport, 
and  in  the  tone  of  disposition  shown  in  them,  as 


178  IVIIO    WROTE    THE  BIBLE '^ 

well  as  in  the  language.  ...  As  regards  the  oc- 
casion and  substance  of  these  songs,  the  two 
first  and  the  two  last  relate  to  the  misery  which 
had  been  sent  on  the  Jewish  people,  and  particu- 
larly on  Jerusalem ;  the  middle  one,  however, 
chiefly  refers  to  the  personal  sufferings  of  the 
author."! 

These  five  parts  are  not  the  five  chapters  of 
a  book  ;  they  are  five  distinct  poems,  each  com- 
plete in  itself,  though  they  are  all  connected  in 
meaning.  You  notice  the  regularity  of  the  struc- 
ture, which  is  even  exhibited  to  some  extent  in 
the  Old  Version.  The  first  and  second,  the 
fourth  and  fifth,  have  each  twenty-two  verses  or 
stanzas  ;  the  third  one  has  sixty-six  stanzas.  All 
but  the  last  are  acrostical  poems.  There  are 
twenty-two  letters  in  the  Hebrew  alphabet ;  each 
of  these  letters,  in  regular  order,  begins  a  verse 
in  four  of  these  songs  ;  in  the  third  lamentation 
there  are  three  verses  for  each  letter. 

The  time  at  which  these  elegies  were  written 
was  undoubtedly  the  year  of  the  capture  of  Jeru- 
salem by  the  army  of  Nebuchadnezzar,  586  b.  c. 
The  Chaldean  army  had  been  investing  the  city 
for  more  than  a  year ;  the  walls  were  finally 
broken  down,  and  the  Chaldeans  rushed  in  ;  as 
they  gained  entrance  on  one  side,  the  wretched 
King  Zedekiah  escaped  on  the  other  with  a  few 
followers  and  fled  down  the  Jericho  road  ;  he  was 
pursued  and  overtaken,  his  sons  and  princes  were 

^  Vol.  ii.  p.  102. 


THE   POETICAL   BOOK'S.  179 

slain  before  his  face,  then  his  own  eyes  were  put 
out,  and  he  was  led  away  in  chains  to  Bal^ylon, 
where  he  afterward  died  in  captivity.  After  a 
few  months'  work  of  this  sort,  a  portion  of  the 
Chaldeans  under  Nebuzar-adan  returned  to  the 
dismantled  and  pillaged  city  and  utterly  de- 
stroyed both  the  city  and  the  temple.  It  is  sup- 
posed that  Jeremiah,  who  was  allowed  to  remain 
in  the  city  during  this  bloody  interval,  wrote 
these  elegies  in  the  midst  of  the  desolation  and 
fear  then  impending.  "  Never,"  says  Dean  Mil- 
man,  "  was  ruined  city  lamented  in  language  so 
exquisitely  pathetic.  Jerusalem  is,  as  it  were, 
personified  and  bewailed  with  the  passionate  sor- 
row of  private  and  domestic  attachment ;  while 
the  more  general  pictures  of  the  famine,  common 
misery  of  every  rank  and  age  and  sex,  all  the 
desolation,  the  carnage,  the  violation,  the  drag- 
ging away  into  captivity,  the  remembrance  of 
former  glories,  of  the  gorgeous  ceremonies,  and 
of  the  glad  festivals,  the  awful  sense  of  the  Di- 
vine wrath,  heightening  the  present  calamities, 
are  successively  drawn  with  all  the  life  and  real- 
ity of  an  eye-witness."  ^ 

The  ethical  and  spiritual  qualities  of  the  book 
are  pure  and  high  ;  the  writer  does  not  fail  to 
enforce  the  truth  that  it  is  because  "  Jerusalem 
hath  grievously  sinned  "  that  "  she  is  become  an 
unclean  thing."  And  in  the  midst  of  all  this 
calamity  there  is  no  rebellion  against  God;  it  is 

^  History  0/  t/te  Jews,  i.  446. 


I  So  WHO  WROTE    THE  BIBLE? 

only  the  cry  of  a  desolate  but  trusting  soul  to  a 
just  and  faithful  Ruler. 

The  Proverbs,  in  the  Hebrew  Bible,  is  called 
"Mishle,"  or  sometimes  **  Mishle  Shelomoh." 
The  first  word  signifies  Parables  or  Proverbs  or 
Sayings ;  the  second  word  is  the  supposed  name 
of  the  author,  Solomon.  By  the  later  Jews  it 
is  sometimes  called  **  Sepher  Chokmah,"  —  the 
Book  of  Wisdom,  —  the  same  title  as  that  which 
is  borne  by  one  of  the  apocryphal  books. 

Here,  doubtless,  we  have  again,  in  the  name  of 
the  author,  what  Delitzsch  calls  a  common  de- 
nominator. On  this  subject  the  words  of  Wil- 
liam Aldis  Wright,  in  Smith's  "Bible  Diction- 
ary," express  a  conservative  judgment :  — 

*'  The  superscriptions  which  are  affixed  to  sev- 
eral portions  of  the  Book  of  Proverbs  in  i.  i,  x.  i, 
XXV.  I,  attribute  the  authorship  of  those  portions 
to  Solomon,  the  son  of  David,  king  of  Israel. 
With  the  exception  of  the  last  two  chapters, 
which  are  distinctly  assigned  to  other  authors, 
it  is  probable  that  the  statement  of  the  super- 
scriptions is  in  the  main  correct,  and  that  the 
majority  of  the  proverbs  contained  in  the  book 
were  uttered  or  collected  by  Solomon.  It  was 
natural  and  quite  in  accordance  with  the  prac- 
tice of  other  nations  that  the  Hebrews  should 
connect  Solomon's  name  with  a  collection  of 
maxims  and  precepts  which  form  a  part  of  their 
literature  to  which  he  is  known  to  have  contrib- 
uted  most   largely    (i    Kings,  iv.  32).      In   the 


THE   POETICAL   BOOK'S.  i8l 

same  way  the  Greeks  attributed  most  of  their 
sayings  to  Pythagoras  ;  the  Arabs  to  Lokman, 
Abu  Obeid,  Al  Mofaddel,  Meidani,  and  Samakh- 
shari ;  the  Persians  to  P^erid  Attar ;  and  the 
northern  people  to  Odin. 

"But  there  can  be  no  question  that  the  Hebrews 
were  much  more  justified  in  assigning  the  Prov- 
erbs to  Solomon  than  the  nations  which  have 
just  been  enumerated  were  in  attributing  the 
collections  of  national  maxims  to  the  traditional 
authors  above  mentioned."  ^ 

This  is,  undoubtedly,  as  much  as  can  be  truly 
said  respecting  the  Solomonian  authorship  of 
these  sayings.  Professor  Davidson,  writing  at  a 
later  day,  is  more  guarded. 

"In  the  book  which  now  exists  we  find  gath- 
ered together  the  most  precious  fruits  of  the  wis- 
dom of  Israel  during  many  hundreds  of  years, 
and  undoubtedly  the  later  centuries  were  richer, 
or  at  all  events  fuller,  in  their  contributions  than 
the  earlier.  The  tradition,  however,  which  con- 
nects Solomon  with  the  direction  of  mind  known 
as  'The  Wisdom'  cannot  be  reasonably  set 
aside.  .  .  .  Making  allowances  for  the  exaggera- 
tions of  later  times,  we  should  leave  history  and 
tradition  altogether  unexplained  if  we  disallowed 
the  claim  of  Solomon  to  have  exercised  a  crea- 
tive influence  upon  the  wisdom  in  Israel."  ^ 
The  book  is  divided  into  several  sections  : 

1  Art.  "  Book  of  Proverl)s." 

2  Art.  "  Proverbs,"  Eiuyc.  Brit. 


1 82  IV//0  WROTE    THE  BIBLE? 

1.  A  general  introduction,  explaining  the  char- 
acter and  aim  of  the  book,  which  occupies  the 
first  six  verses. 

2.  A  connected  discourse  upon  wisdom,  not  in 
the  form  of  maxims,  but  rather  in  the  manner  of 
a  connected  essay,  fills  the  first  nine  chapters. 

3.  The  next  thirteen  chapters  (x.-xxii.  16)  con- 
tain three  hundred  and  seventy-four  miscellane- 
ous proverbs,  each  consisting  of  two  phrases,  the 
second  of  which  is  generally  antithetical  to  the 
first,  as  "  A  wise  son  maketh  a  glad  father,  but  a 
foolish  son  is  a  heaviness  to  his  mother."  There 
is  only  one  exception  (xix.  7),  where  the  couplet 
is  a  triplet.  Probably  one  phrase  has  been  lost. 
The  heading  of  this  section  is  "  The  Proverbs  of 
Solomon  ;  "  the  section  ends  with  the  twenty- 
second  chapter. 

4.  From  xxii.  17  to  xxiv.  22  is  a  more  con- 
nected discussion,  though  in  the  proverbial  form, 
of  the  principles  of  conduct.  This  is  introduced 
by  a  brief  exhortation  to  listen  to  *•  the  words  of 
the  wise." 

5.  At  xxiv.  23,  begins  another  short  section 
which  extends  through  the  chapter,  under  this 
title  :  "These  also  are  sayings  of  the  wise." 

6.  The  next  five  chapters  (xxv.-xxix.)  have  for 
their  caption  this  sentence:  "These  also  are 
proverbs  of  Solomon,  which  the  men  of  Hcze- 
kiah,  king  of  Judah,  copied  out." 

7.  Chapter  xxx.  is  said  to  contain  "  The  words 
of  Agur,  the  son  of  Jakeh,  the  oracle."  The 
author  is  wholly  unknown. 


THE  POETICAL   BOOKS.  1S3 

8.  Chapter^xxxi.  1-9,  contains  "The  words  of 
King  Lemuel,  the  prophecy  that  his  mother 
taught  him."  He  too  stands  here  upon  the 
sacred  page  but  the  shadow  of  a  name. 

9.  The  book  closes  with  an  acrostical  poem  — 
twenty-two  verses  beginning  with  the  Hebrew 
letters  in  the  order  of  the  alphabet — upon  **  The 
Virtuous  Woman."  The  word  "virtue"  here  is 
used  in  the  Roman  sense  ;  it  signifies  rather  the 
vigorous  woman,  the  capable  woman. 

Of  these  sections  it  seems  probable  that  the 
one  here  numbered  6  is  the  oldest,  and  that  it 
contains  the  largest  proportion  of  Solomonian 
sayings.  Professor  Davidson  thinks  that  it  can- 
not have  taken  its  present  form  earlier  than  the 
eighth  century. 

The  character  of  the  teaching  of  the  book  is 
not  uniform,  but  on  the  whole  it  is  best  described 
as  prudential  rather  than  prophetic.  It  embod- 
ies what  we  are  in  the  habit  of  calling  "  good 
common  sense."  There  is  an  occasional  maxim 
whose  application  to  our  own  time  may  be 
doubted,  and  now  and  then  one  whose  morality 
has  been  superseded  by  the  higher  standards  of 
the  New  Testament  ;  but,  after  making  all  due 
deductions,  we  shall  doubtless  agree  that  it  is  a 
precious  legacy  of  practical  counsel,  and  shall 
consent  to  these  words  of  Professor  Conant  :  — 

"The  gnomic  poetry  of  the  most  enlightened 
of  other  nations  will  not  bear  comparison  with  it 
in  the  depth  and  certainty  of  its  foundation  prin- 


184  ^VI^O    WROTE    THE  BIBLE? 

ciples,  or  in  the  comprehensiveness  and  moral 
grandeur  of  its  conceptions  of  human  duty  and 
responsibility."  ^ 

EccLESiASTES,  OR  THE  Preacher,  bcars  in  the 
Hebrew  collection  the  name,  "  Koheleth,"  which 
means  the  assembler  of  the  people,  and  therefore, 
probably,  the  man  who  addresses  the  assembly. 
Ecclesiastes  is  the  Greek  name  of  the  book  in  the 
Septuagint  ;  we  have  simply  copied  the  Greek 
word  in  English  letters. 

The  first  verse  is,  '*  The  words  of  Koheleth 
(the  Preacher),  the  son  of  David,  King  in  Jeru- 
salem." The  onlv  son  of  David  who  was  ever 
king  in  Jerusalem  was  Solomon  ;  was  Solomon 
the  author  of  this  book  }  This  is  the  apparent 
claim  ;  the  question  is  whether  we  have  not  here, 
as  in  the  case  of  Daniel,  a  book  put  forth  pseu- 
donymously ;  whether  the  author  does  not  per- 
sonate Solomon,  and  speak  his  message  through 
Solomon's  lips.  That  this  is  the  fact  modern 
scholars  almost  unanimously  maintain.  Their 
reasons  for  their  opinion  may  be  briefly  stated  : 

I.  In  the  conclusion  of  the  book  the  author 
speaks  in  his  own  person,  laying  aside  the  thin 
disguise  which  he  has  been  wearing.  In  several 
other  passages  the  literary  veil  becomes  trans- 
parent. Thus  (i.  12),  "I  Koheleth  was  king  over 
Israel  in  Jerusalem."  This  sounds  like  the  voice 
of  one  looking  backward  and  trying  to  put  him- 
self in  Solomon's  place.     Again,  in  this  and  the 

1  Smith's  Bible  Dictio7tary,  iii.  2616. 


THE  POETICAL   BOOK'S.  1 85 

following  chapter,  he  says  of  himself :  **  I  have 
gotten  me  great  wisdom  above  all  that  were  be- 
fore me  in  Jerusalem  ;  "  "I  was  great,  and  in- 
creased more  than  all  that  were  before  me  in 
Jerusalem,"  etc.,  —  "all  of  which,"  says  Bleck, 
"does  not  appear  very  natural  as  coming  from 
the  son  of  David,  who  first  captured  Jerusalem." 
Nobody  had  been  before  him  in  Jerusalem  except 
his  father  David. 

2.  The  state  of  society  as  described  in  the 
book,  and  particularly  the  reference  to  rulers, 
agree  better  with  the  theory  that  it  was  written 
during  the  Persian  period,  after  the  Captivity, 
when  the  satraps  of  the  Persian  king  were  ruling 
with  vacillating  arbitrariness  and  fitful  violence. 

3.  The  religious  condition  of  the  people  as  here 
depicted,  and  the  religious  ideas  of  the  book  rep- 
resent the  period  following  the  Captivity,  and  do 
not  represent  the  golden  age  of  Israel. 

4.  More  important  and  indeed  perfectly  deci- 
sive is  the  fact  that  the  book  is  full  of  Chaldaisms, 
and  that  the  Hebrew  is  the  later  Hebrew,  of  the 
days  of  Ezra,  Nehemiah,  Daniel,  and  Esther.  It 
could  not  have  been  written  by  Solomon,  any 
more  than  the  "  Idylls  of  the  King  "  could  have 
been  written  by  Edmund  Spenser.  There  are 
those,  of  course,  who  maintain  that  the  book  was 
written  by  Solomon  ;  just  as  there  are  those  who 
still  maintain  that  the  sun  revolves  around  the 
earth.  The  reason  for  this  opinion  is  found  in 
the  first  sentence  of  the  book  itself.     The  book 


1 86  IVIIO    WROTE    THE   BIBLE? 

announces  its  own  author,  it  is  said  ;  and  to  ques- 
tion the  truth  of  this  claim  is  to  deny  the  veracity 
of  Scripture.  On  this  question  we  may  call,  from 
the  array  of  conservative  writers  who  have  given 
us  Smith's  "  Bible  Dictionary,"  such  a  witness  as 
Professor  Plumptre :  — 

"The  hypothesis  that  every  such  statement  in 
a  canonical  book  must  be  received  as  literally 
true  is,  in  fact,  an  assumption  that  inspired  writ- 
ers were  debarred  from  forms  of  composition 
which  were  open,  without  blame,  to  others.  In 
the  literature  of  every  other  nation  the  form  of 
personated  authorship,  when  there  is  no  aimnus 
dccipicndi,  has  been  recognized  as  a  legitimate 
channel  for  the  expression  of  opinions,  or  the 
quasi-dramatic  representation  of  character.  Why 
should  we  venture  on  the  assertion  that  if  adopted 
by  the  writers  of  the  Old  Testament  it  would 
make  them  guilty  of  falsehood }  .  .  .  There  is 
nothing  that  need  startle  us  in  the  thought  that 
an  inspired  writer  might  use  a  liberty  which  has 
been  granted  without  hesitation  to  the  teachers 
of  mankind  in  every  age  and  country."  ^ 

That  such  is  the  character  of  the  book  and 
that  it  appeared  some  time  during  the  Persian 
age  are  well-ascertained  results  of  scholarship. 

The  doctrine  of  the  book  is  not  so  easily  sum- 
marized. It  is  a  hard  book  to  interpret.  Dr. 
Ginsberg  gives  a  striking  resiinie  of  the  different 
theories  of  its  teaching  which  have  been  promul- 

1  Art.  "  Ecclesiastes,"  vol.  i.  p.  645. 


THE  POETICAL  BOOKS.  187  • 

gated.  There  is  no  room  here  to  enter  upon  the 
great  question.  Let  it  suffice  to  say  that  we 
seem  to  have  in  these  words  the  soliloquy  of  a 
soul  struggling  with  the  problem  of  evil,  some- 
times borne  down  by  a  dismal  skepticism,  some- 
times asserting  his  faith  in  the  enduring  right- 
eousness. The  writer's  problem  is  the  one  to 
which  Mr.  Mallock  has  given  an  epigrammatic 
statement:  **  Is  life  worth  living?"  He  greatly 
doubts,  yet  he  strongly  hopes.  Much  of  the 
time  it  appears  to  him  that  the  best  thing  a  man 
can  do  is  to  enjoy  the  present  good  and  let  the 
world  wag.  But  the  outcome  of  all  this  struggle 
is  the  conviction  that  there  is  a  life  beyond  this 
life  and  a  tribunal  at  which  all  wrongs  will  be 
righted,  and  that  to  fear  God  and  keep  his  com- 
mandments is  the  whole  duty  of  man.  There 
are  thus  many  passages  in  the  book  which  ex- 
press a  bitter  skepticism  ;  to  winnow  the  wheat 
from  the  chaff  and  to  find  out  what  we  ought  to 
think  about  life  is  a  serious  undertaking.  It  is 
only  the  wise  and  skillful  interpreter  who  can 
steer  his  bark  along  these  tortuous  channels  of 
reflection,  and  not  run  aground.  Yet,  properly 
interpreted,  the  book  is  sound  for  substance  of 
doctrine,  and  the  experience  which  it  delineates, 
though  sad  and  depressing,  is  full  of  instruction 
for  us.  Dean  Stanley's  words  about  it  are  as 
true  as  they  are  eloquent ;  they  will  throw  some 
light  on  the  path  which  lies  just  before  us  :  — 
"  As  the  Book  of  Job  is  couched  in  the  form  of 


1 88  WHO   WROTE    THE  BIBLE? 

a  dramatic  argument  between  the  patriarch  and 
his  friends,  as  the  Song  of  Songs  is  a  dramatic 
dialogue  between  the  Lover  and  the  Loved  One, 
so  the  J^ook  of  Ecclesiastes  is  a  drama  of  a  still 
more  tragic  kind.  It  is  an  interchange  of  voices, 
higher  and  lower,  mournful  and  joyful,  within  a 
single  human  soul.  It  is  like  the  struggle  be- 
tween the  two  principles  in  the  Epistle  to  the 
Romans.  It  is  like  the  question  and  answer  of 
*  The  Two  Voices '  of  our  modern  poet.  .  .  . 
Every  speculation  and  thought  of  the  human 
heart  is  heard  and  expressed  and  recognized  in 
turn.  The  conflicts,  which  in  other  parts  of  the 
Bible  are  confined  to  a  single  verse  or  a  single 
chapter,  are  here  expanded  into  a  whole  book." 
And  after  quoting  a  few  of  the  darker  and  more 
cynical  utterances,  this  clear-sighted  teacher  goes 
on  :  "  Their  cry  is  indeed  full  of  doubt  and  de- 
spair and  perplexity  ;  it  is  such  as  we  often  hear 
from  the  melancholy,  skeptical,  inquiring  spirits 
of  our  own  age  ;  such  as  we  often  refuse  to  hear 
and  regard  as  unworthy  even  a  good  man''s 
thought  or  care,  but  the  admission  of  such  a  cry 
into  the  Book  of  Ecclesiastes  shows  that  it  is  not 
beneath  the  notice  of  the  Bible,  not  beneath  the 
notice  of  God."  ^ 

"  The  Song  of  Songs  "  is  another  of  the  books 
ascribed  to  Solomon.  It  may  have  been  written 
in  Solomon's  time  ;  that  it  was  composed  by 
Solomon  himself  is  not  probable. 

^  History  of  the  Jewish  Churchy  ii.  283.  2S4. 


THE  POETICAL  BOOKS.  1 89 

It  has  generally  been  regarded  as  an  allegor- 
ical poem  ;  the  Jews  interpreted  it  as  setting 
forth  the  love  of  Jehovah  for  Israel  ;  the  Chris- 
tian interpreters  have  made  it  the  representation 
of  the  love  of  Christ  for  his  Church.  These  are 
the  two  principal  theories,  but  it  might  be  in- 
structive to  let  Archdeacon  Farrar  recite  to  us  a 
short  list  of  the  explanations  which  have  been 
given  of  the  book  in  the  course  of  the  ages  :  — 

*'  It  represents,  say  the  commentators,  the 
love  of  God  for  the  congregation  of  Israel  ;  it  re- 
lates the  history  of  the  Jews  from  the  Exodus  to 
the  Messiah  ;  it  is  a  consolation  to  afflicted  Israel ; 
it  is  an  occult  history  ;  it  represents  the  union  of 
the  divine  soul  with  the  earthly  body,  or  of  the 
material  with  the  active  intellect ;  it  is  the  con- 
versation of  Solomon  and  Wisdom  ;  it  describes 
the  love  of  Christ  to  his  Church  ;  it  is  historico- 
prophetic  ;  it  is  Solomon's  thanksgiving  for  a 
happy  reign  ;  it  is  a  love-song  unworthy  of  any 
place  in  the  canon  ;  it  treats  of  man's  reconcilia- 
tion to  God  ;  it  is  a  prophecy  of  the  Church  from 
the  Crucifixion  till  after  the  Reformation  ;  it  is 
an  anticipation  of  the  Apocalypse  ;  it  is  the  seven 
days'  epithalamium  on  the  marriage  of  Solomon 
with  the  daughter  of  Pharaoh  ;  it  is  a  magazine 
for  direction  and  consolation  under  every  condi- 
tion ;  it  treats  in  hieroglyphics  of  the  sepulchre 
of  the  Saviour,  his  death,  and  the  Old  Testament 
saints  ;  it  refers  to  Hezekiah  and  the  Ten  Tribes ; 
it  is  written  in  glorification  of  the  Virgin  Mary. 


190  IV//0    WROTE    THE  BIBLE? 

Such  were  the  impossible  and  diverging  interpre- 
tations of  what  many  regarded  as  the  very  Word 
of  God.  A  few  only,  till  the  beginning  of  this 
century,  saw  the  truth,  —  which  is  so  obvious  to 
all  who  go  to  the  Bible  with  the  humble  desire  to 
know  what  it  says,  and  not  to  interpret  it  into 
their  own  baseless  fancies,  —  that  it  is  the  ex- 
quisite celebration  of  a  pure  love  in  humble  life  ; 
of  a  love  which  no  splendor  can  dazzle  and  no 
flattery  seduce." 

These  last  sentences  of  Canon  Farrar  give  the 
probable  clew  to  the  interpretation  of  the  book. 
It  is  a  dramatic  poem,  celebrating  the  story  of  a 
beautiful  peasant  girl,  a  native  of  the  northern 
village  of  Shunem,  who  was  carried  away  by  Sol- 
omon's officers  and  confined  in  his  harem  at  Jeru- 
salem. But  in  the  midst  of  all  this  splendor  her 
heart  is  true  to  the  peasant  lover  whom  she  has 
left  behind,  nor  can  any  blandishments  of  the 
king  disturb  her  constancy ;  her  honor  remains 
unstained,  and  she  is  carried  home  at  length, 
heart-whole  and  happy,  by  the  swain  who  has 
come  to  Jerusalem  for  her  rescue.  This  is  the 
beautiful  story.  The  phrases  in  which  it  is  told 
are,  indeed,  too  explicit  for  Occidental  ears ;  the 
color  and  the  heat  of  the  tropics  is  in  the  poetry, 
but  it  is  perfectly  pure  ;  it  celebrates  the  triumph 
of  maiden  modesty  and  innocence.  **  The  song 
breathes  at  the  same  time,"  says  Ewald,  "such 
deep  modesty  and  chaste  innocence  of  heart, 
such  determined  defiance  of  the  over-refinement 


THE   POETICAL   BOOKS.  191 

and  degeneracy  of  the  court-life,  such  stinging 
scorn  of  the  growing  corruption  of  life  in  great 
cities  and  palaces,  that  no  clearer  or  stronger 
testimony  can  be  found  of  the  healthy  vigor 
which,  in  this  century,  still  characterized  the  na- 
tion at  large,  than  the  combination  of  art  and 
simplicity  in  the  Canticles."  ^ 

The  Book  of  Job  has  been  the  subject  of  a 
great  amount  of  critical  study.  The  earliest  Jew- 
ish tradition  is  that  it  was  written  by  Moses  ; 
this  tradition  is  preserved  in  the  Talmud,  which 
afterward  states  that  it  was  composed  by  an  Is- 
raelite who  returned  to  Palestine  from  the  Baby- 
lonian Captivity.  It  is  almost  certain  that  the 
first  of  these  traditions  is  baseless.  The  theory 
that  it  was  written  after  the  Captivity  is  held  by 
many  scholars,  but  it  is  beset  with  serious  diffi- 
culties. 

The  book  contains  no  allusion  whatever  to  the 
Levitical  law,  nor  to  any  of  the  religious  rites 
and  ceremonies  of  the  Jews.  The  inference  has 
therefore  been  drawn  that  it  must  have  been 
written  before  the  giving  of  the  law,  probably  in 
the  period  between  Abraham  and  Moses.  It 
seems  inconceivable  that  a  devout  Hebrew  should 
have  treated  all  the  great  questions  discussed  in 
this  book  without  any  reference  to  the  religious 
institutions  of  his  own  people.  It  is  equally  diffi- 
cult to  understand  how  the  divine  interposition 
for  the  punishment  of  the  wicked  and  the  reward- 

1  History  of  Israel^  iv.  43. 


192  WHO  WROTE    THE  BIBLE? 

ing  of  the  righteous  could  have  been  so  fully  con- 
sidered without  a  glance  at  the  lessorfs  of  the 
Exodus,  if  the  Exodus  had  taken  place  before  the 
book  was  written.  But  these  arguments  for  an 
early  origin  are  quite  neutralized  by  the  doctrine 
of  the  book.  The  view  of  divine  providence  set 
forth  in  it  is  very  unlike  that  contained  in  the 
Pentateuch.  It  is  not  necessary  to  say  that  there 
is  any  contradiction  between  these  two  views  ; 
but  the  subject  is  approached  from  a  very  differ- 
ent direction,  and  the  whole  tone  of  the  book  in- 
dicates a  state  of  religious  thought  quite  differ- 
ent from  that  which  existed  among  the  Hebrews 
before  the  Exodus.  "  If  we  are  to  believe  that 
Moses  wrote  it,"  says  a  late  critic,  "  then  we 
must  believe  that  he  held  these  views  as  an  eso- 
teric philosophy,  and  omitted  from  the  religion 
which  he  gave  to  his  people  the  truths  which  had 
been  revealed  to  him  in  the  desert.  The  book 
itself  must  have  been  suppressed  until  long  after 
his  day.  The  ignorant  Israelites  could  not  have 
been  trained  under  the  discipline  of  the  Law  if 
they  had  had  at  the  same  time  the  fiery,  cynical, 
half-skeptical,  and  enigmatical  commentary  which 
the  Book  of  Job  furnishes.  There  is  nothing  ab- 
normal or  contrary  to  the  conception  of  an  in- 
spired revelation  in  the  development  of  truth  by 
wider  views  and  deeper  analysis  through  succes- 
sive sacred  writers.  But  it  is  repulsive  to  con- 
ceive an  inspired  teacher  as  first  gaining  the 
wider  view,  and  then    deliberately  hiding  it,  to 


THE   POETICAL   BOOK'S.  1 93 

Utter  the  truth  in  cruder  and  more  partial 
forms."  ^  The  fact  that  neither  the  person  nor 
the  Book  of  Job  is  mentioned  in  the  historical 
books  of  the  Jews,  and  that  the  first  reference  to 
him  is  in  the  Book  of  Ezekicl,  would  indicatj 
that  the  date  of  the  book  must  have  been  much 
later  than  the  time  of  Moses.  This  argument 
could  not  be  pressed,  however,  for  we  have  noted 
already  the  silence  of  the  earlier  historical  books 
concerning  the  Mosaic  law. 

The  dilemma  of  the  critics  may  be  summed  up 
as  follows  :  — 

I.  The  absence  of  allusion  to  the  history  of 
the  Exodus  and  to  the  Mosaic  system  shows  that 
it  must  have  been  written  before  the  Exodus. 
2.  The  absence  of  all  reference  to  the  book  in 
the  Hebrew  history,  and  more  especially  the  doc- 
trinal character  of  the  book,  shows  that  it  could 
not  have  been  written  before  the  age  of  Solomon. 
The  latter  conclusion  is  held  much  more  firmly 
than  the  former ;  and  the  silence  respecting  the 
history  and  the  Law  is  explained  on  the  theory 
that  the  book  is  a  historical  drama,  the  scene 
of  which  is  laid  in  the  period  before  Moses,  and 
the  historic  unities  of  which  have  been  perfectly 
observed  by  the  writer.  The  people  of  this 
drama  lived  before  the  Exodus  and  the  giving  of 
the  Law,  and  their  conversations  do  not,  there- 
fore, refer  to  any  of  the  events  which  have  hap- 
pened since.     The  locality  of  the  drama  is  the 

^  Raymond's  The  Book  of  yob,  p.  i3. 


194  ^^^O    WROTE    THE  BIBLE? 

"  Land  of  Uz,"  and  the  geographers  agree  that 
the  descriptions  of  the  book  apply  to  the  region 
known  in  the  classical  geographies  as  "  Arabia 
Deserta,"  southeast  of  Palestine.  It  is  admitted 
that  the  scenery  and  costume  of  the  book  are  not 
Jewish  ;  and  they  agree  more  perfectly  with  what 
is  known  of  that  country  than  with  any  other, 
That  Job  was  a  real  personage,  and  that  the  drama 
is  founded  upon  historical  tradition  cannot  be 
doubted.  It  is  probable  that  it  was  written  after 
the  time  of  Josiah. 

I  need  not  rehearse  the  story.  Job  is  over- 
taken by  great  losses  and  sufferings ;  in  the 
midst  of  his  calamities  three  friends  draw  near 
to  condole  with  him,  and  also  to  administer  to 
him  a  little  wholesome  reproof  and  admonition. 
Their  theory  is  that  suffering  such  as  he  is  en- 
during is  a  sign  of  the  divine  displeasure  ;  that 
Job  must  have  been  a  great  sinner,  or  he  could 
not  be  such  a  sufferer.  This  argument  Job  in- 
dignantly repels.  He  does  not  claim  to  be  per- 
fect, but  he  knows  that  he  has  been  an  upright 
man,  and  he  knows  that  bad  men  round  about 
him  are  prospering,  while  he  is  scourged  and  over- 
whelmed with  trouble  ;  he  sees  this  happening 
all  over  the  earth, — the  good  afflicted,  the  evil 
exalted ;  and  he  knows,  therefore,  that  the  doc- 
trine of  his  miserable  comforters  cannot  be  true. 
Sin  does  bring  suffering,  that  he  admits ;  but 
that  all  suffering  is  the  result  of  sin  he  denies. 
He  cannot  understand  it ;  his  heart  is  bitter  when 


THE  POETICAL  BOOKS.  195 

he  reflects  upon  it ;  and  the  insistence  of  his  vis- 
itors awakes  in  him  a  fierce  indignation,  and 
leads  him  to  charge  God  with  injustice  and  cru- 
elty. They  are  shocked  and  scandalized  at  his 
almost  blasphemous  outcries  against  God  ;  but 
he  maintains  his  righteousness,  and  drives  his 
critics  and  censors  from  the  field.  Finally  Je- 
hovah himself  is  represented  as  answering  Job 
out  of  the  whirlwind,  in  one  of  the  most  sublime 
passages  in  all  literature,  —  silencing  the  argu- 
ments of  his  friends,  sweeping  away  all  the  rea- 
sonings which  have  preceded,  explaining  nothing, 
but  only  affirming  his  own  infinite  power  and 
wisdom.  Before  this  august  manifestation  Job 
bows  with  submission  ;  the  mystery  of  evil  is  rot 
explained  ;  he  is  only  convinced  that  it  cannot 
be  explained,  and  is  content  to  be  silent  and  wait. 
The  teaching  of  the  book  is  well  summarized  in 
these  words  of  Dr.  Raymond  :  — 

**  The  current  notion  that  calamity  is  always 
the  punishment  of  crime  and  prosperity  always 
the  reward  of  piety  is  not  true.  Neither  is  it 
true  that  the  distress  of  a  righteous  man  is  an 
indication  of  God's  anger.  There  are  other  pur- 
poses in  the  Divine  mind  of  which  we  know 
nothing.  For  instance,  a  good  man  may  be  af- 
flicted, by  permission  of  God,  and  through  the 
agency  of  Satan,  to  prove  the  genuine  character 
of  his  goodness.  But  whether  this  or  some  other 
reason,  involved  in  the  administration  of  the  uni- 
verse,   underlies    the   dispensation    of    temporal 


196  WHO   WROTE    THE  BIBLE? 

blessings  and  afflictions,  one  thing  is  certain : 
the  plans  of  God  are  not,  will  not  be,  cannot  be 
revealed  ;  and  the  resignation  of  faith,  not  of  fa- 
talism, is  the  only  wisdom  of  man."  ^ 

I  have  reserved  for  the  last  the  most  precious 
of  all  the  Hebrew  writings,  the  Book  of  Psalms. 
The  Hebrews  called  it  "Tehillim,"  praise-book 
or  hymn-book,  and  the  title  exactly  describes  it ; 
in  the  form  in  which  we  have  it,  it  was  a  hymn- 
book  prepared  for  the  service  of  the  later  temple. 

If  the  question  *' Who  wrote  the  Psalms.^" 
were  to  be  propounded  in  any  meeting  of  Sunday- 
school  teachers,  nine  tenths  of  them  would  un- 
hesitatingly answer,  "  David."  If  the  same  ques- 
tion were  put  to  an  assembly  of  modern  Biblical 
scholars  some  would  answer  that  David  wrote 
very  few  and  perhaps  not  any  of  the  psalms  ; 
that  they  were  written  during  the  Maccabean 
dynasty,  only  one  or  two  hundred  years  before 
Christ.  Both  these  views  are  extreme.  We 
may  believe  that  David  did  write  several  of  the 
psalms,  but  it  is  more  than  probable  that  the  great 
majority  of  them  are  from  other  writers. 

Seventy-three  psalms  of  the  book  seem  to  be 
ascribed  to  David  in  their  titles.  "  A  Psalm  of 
David,"  *'  Maschil  of  David,"  *'  Michtam  of  David," 
or  something  similar  is  written  over  seventy-three 
different  psalms.  Concerning  these  titles  there 
has  been  much  discussion.  It  has  been  main- 
tained that  they  are  found  in  the  ancient  Hebrew 

^  The  Book  of  yob y  p.  49. 


TIIK   POETICAL   BOOK'S.  1 97 

text  as  constituent  parts  of  the  Psalms,  and  are 
therefore  entitled  to  full  credit.     But  thi.o  theory 
does  not  seem  to  be  held  by  the  majority  of  modern 
scholars.     "The  variations   of  the  inscriptions," 
says  a  late  conservative  writer,  "in  the  Septuagint 
and  the  other  versions  sufficiently  prove  that  they 
were  not  regarded  as  fixed  portions  of  the  canon, 
and  that  they  were  open  to  conjectural  emenda- 
tions." 1     Dr.    Moll,    the  learned    author    of  the 
monograph  on  the  Psalms  in   Lange's  *'  Commen- 
tary," says  in  his  introduction  :   "  The  assumption 
that  all   the  inscriptions  originated  with   the  au- 
thors of  the  Psalms,  and  are  therefore  inseparable 
from  the  text,  cannot  be  consistently  maintained. 
It  can  at  most  be  held  only  of  a  few.  .   .  .  There 
is  now  a  disposition  to  admit  that  some  of  them 
may  have  originated  with  the  authors  themselves." 
The  probability  is  that  most  of  these  inscrip- 
tions were  added  by  editors  and  transcribers  of 
the  Psalms.     You  open  your  hymn-book,  and  find 
over  one  hymn  the  name  of  Watts,  and  over  an- 
other the  name  of  Wesley,  and  over  another  the 
name    of    Montgomery.      Who     inserted    these 
names  .?     Not  the  authors,  of  course,  but  the  ed- 
itor or  compiler  of  the  collection.     Compilers  in 
these  days  are  careful  and  accurate,  but  they  do 
make  mistakes,  and  you  find  the  same  hymn  as- 
cribed to   different    authors    in    different   books, 
while  hymns  that  are  anonymous  in  one  book  are 
credited  in  another,  rightly  or  wrongly,  to   the 

1  Speaker's  Commentary ^  iv.  151. 


198  WHO   WROTE    THE   BIBLE? 

name  of  some  author.  The  men  who  collected 
the  hymn-book  of  the  Jews  made  similar  mis- 
takes, and  the  old  copies  do  not  agree  in  all  their 
titles. 

But  while  the  inscriptions  over  the  psalms  do 
not,  generally,  belong  to  the  psalms  themselves, 
and  are  not  in  all  cases  accurate,  most  of  them 
were,  no  doubt,  suffixed  to  the  psalms  at  a  very 
early  day.  "On  the  whole,"  says  Dr.  Moll,  "an 
opinion  favorable  to  the  antiquity  and  value  of 
these  superscriptions  has  again  been  wrought  out, 
which  ascribes  them  for  the  most  part  to  tradi- 
tion, and  indeed  a  very  ancient  one." 

Even  if  the  titles  were  rightly  translated,  then, 
they  would  not  give  us  conclusive  proof  of  the 
authorship  of  the  Psalms.  But  some  of  the  best 
scholars  assert  that  they  are  not  rightly  trans- 
lated. The  late  Professor  Murray  of  Johns  Hop- 
kins University,  whose  little  book  on  the  Psalms 
is  vouched  for  as  one  of  the  most  admirable  pro- 
ductions of  Biblical  scholarship  which  has  yet 
appeared  in  this  country,  says  that  "  whenever  we 
have  an  inscription  in  our  version  stating  that 
the  psalm  is  '  of  David  '  it  is  almost  invariably  a 
mistranslation  of  the  original."  It  should  be 
written  "  to  David,"  and  it  signifies  that  the  com- 
pilers ascribed  the  psalm  to  a  more  ancient  col- 
lection to  which  the  name  of  David  had  been 
appended,  not  because  he  wrote  all  the  poems  in 
it,  but  because  he  originated  the  collection  and 
wrote  many  of  its  songs.     This  older  collection 


THE   POETICAL   BOOKS.  1 99 

was  called  "The  Psalms  of  David"  something  as 
a  popular  hymn-book  of  these  times  is  called 
Robinson's  "  Laudes  Domini,"  because  Dr.  Rob- 
inson compiled  the  book,  and  wrote  some  of  the 
hymns.  This  old  Davidic  collection  is  not  in  ex- 
istence, but  many  of  the  psalms  in  our  book  were 
taken  from  it,  and  the  titles  in  our  version  are 
attempts  to  credit  to  this  old  book  such  of  them 
as  were  thus  borrowed. 

This  method  of  crediting  is  not  altogether  un- 
known in  this  critical  age.  In  the  various  eclec- 
tic commentaries  on  the  Sunday-school  lessons  I 
often  find  sentences  and  paragraphs  credited  to 
"William  Smith"  which  were  taken  from  Dr. 
Smith's  "  Bible  Dictionary,"  the  articles  from 
which  they  are  taken  being  signed  in  all  cases  by 
the  initials  of  the  men  who  wrote  them.  I  find, 
also,  quotations  from  the  "  Speaker's  Commen- 
tary," of  which  Canon  Cook  is  the  editor,  ascribed 
to  "  F.  C.  Cook,"  or  to  "  Cook,"  though  the  table 
of  contents  in  the  volume  from  which  the  quota- 
tion was  taken  bears  in  capital  letters  the  name  of 
the  writer  of  the  commentary  on  this  particular 
book.  In  like  manner  "  Lange  "  gets  the  credit 
of  all  that  is  written  in  his  famous  "  Bibelwerk," 
though  he  wrote  very  little  of  it  himself.  The 
power  to  distinguish  between  editorship  and  au- 
thorship was  not,  probably,  possessed  by  ancient 
compilers  in  any  greater  degree  than  by  modern 
ones  ;  and  the  inscriptions  over  the  psalms  must 
be  estimated  with  this  fact  in  view. 


200  WHO    WROTE    THE  BIBLE? 

I  have  spoken  of  the  present  collection  of  the 
Psalms  as  one  book,  but  it  is  in  reality  five 
books.  It  is  so  divided  in  the  Revised  Version. 
The  concluding  verse  of  the  Forty-first  Psalm  is 
as  follows :  "  Blessed  be  the  Lord  God  of  Israel, 
from  everlasting  to  everlasting.  Amen  and 
amen."  This  doxology  marks  the  close  of  the 
first  hymn-book  prepared  by  the  Jews  for  the 
worship  of  the  second  temple.  It  was  probably 
formed  soon  after  the  first  return  from  the  Exile. 
All  the  Psalms  except  the  first,  the  tenth,  and  the 
thirty-third  are  credited  to  the  old  Davidic  Psalm 
Book.  The  title  of  the  thirty-third  has  probably 
been  omitted  by  some  copyist ;  the  ninth  and 
tenth  in  some  old  Hebrew  copies  are  written  as 
one  psalm,  and  there  is  an  acrostical  arrangement 
which  shows  that  they  really  belong  together. 
The  psalm  may  have  been  divided  for  liturgical 
purposes,  or  by  accident  in  copying.  The  title 
of  the  ninth,  therefore,  covers  the  tenth.  The 
first  and  second  are,  then,  the  only  psalms  that 
are  not  ascribed  to  the  old  book  of  which  this 
book  was  simply  an  abridgment. 

At  the  end  of  the  Seventy-second  Psalm  is  the 
doxology  which  marks  the  close  of  the  second  of 
these  hymn-books.  After  a  while  the  psalms  of 
the  first  book  grew  stale  and  familiar,  and  a  new 
book  was  wanted.  "  Gospel  Hymns  No.  i,"  of 
the  Moody  and  Sankey  psalmody,  had  to  be  fol- 
lowed after  a  year  or  two  by  "  Gospel  Hymns 
No.  2,"  and  then  by  **  No.  3  "  and  '*  No.  4"  and 


THE   POETICAL   BOOKS.  201 

"  No.  5,"  and  finally  they  were  all  bound  up  to- 
gether. I  may  be  pardoned  for  associatnig  things 
sacred  with  things  not  very  sacred,  and  poetry 
with  something  that  is  not  always  poetry,  but  the 
illustration,  familiar  to  all,  shows  exactly  how 
these  five  hymn-books  of  the  Jews  first  came  to 
be,  and  how  they  were  at  length  combined^in  one. 

The  last  verse  of  the  Seventy-second  Psalm  has 
puzzled  many  readers  :  "  The  prayers  of  David 
the  son  of  Jesse  are  ended."  After  this  you  find 
in  our  collection  several  psalms  ascribed  to  David, 
some  of  which  he  undoubtedly  wrote.  The  prob- 
able explanation  is  that  the  Seventy-second  Psalm 
was  the  last  psalm  of  the  old  Davidic  hymn-book  ; 
the  compiler  made  it  the  last  one  of  this  second 
book,  and  carelessly  copied  into  this  psalm  the 
inscription  with  which  the  old  book  ended. 

The  second  of  these  hymn-books  begins,  there- 
fore, with  Psalm  xlii.,  and  ends  with  Psalm  Ixxii., 
a  collection  of  thirty-one  songs  of  praise. 

Number  three  of  the  temple-service  contains 
eighteen  psalms,  and  ends  with  Psalm  Ixxxix ; 
this  book,  as  well  as  the  one  that  precedes  it,  is 
ascribed  by  a  probable  tradition  to  Nehemiah  as 
its  compiler. 

The  last  verse  of  Psalm  cvi.  indicates  the  close 
of  the  fourth  book.  It  contains  but  seventeen 
psalms,  and  is  the  shortest  book  of  the  five. 

The  fifth  book  includes  the  remaining  forty- 
four  psalms,  among  them  the  "  Songs  of  David," 
or  Pilgrim  Songs,  sung  by  the  people  on    their 


202  IVHO    WROTE    THE  BIBLE? 

journeys  to  Jerusalem  to  keep  the  solemn  feasts. 
It  is  probable  that  this  fifth  book  was  compiled 
by  the  authorities  in  charge  of  the  temple  wor- 
ship, and  that  they  at  the  same  time  collected  the 
other  four  books  and  put  them  all  together,  com- 
pleting in  this  way  the  greater  book  of  sacred 
lyrics  which  has  been  so  precious  to  many  gen- 
erations not  only  of  Jews,  but  also  of  Christians. 

Various  unsuccessful  attempts  have  been  made 
to  classify  these  books  according  to  their  subject- 
matter.  It  is  plain  that  the  first  two  are  com- 
posed chiefly  of  the  oldest  psalms  and  of  those 
adapted  to  the  general  purposes  of  worship  ;  the 
third  book  reflects  the  grief  of  the  nation  in  the 
Captivity ;  the  fourth,  the  joy  of  the  returning 
exiles  ;  the  fifth  contains  a  more  miscellaneous 
collection. 

The  Jewish  scholars  recognize  and  sometimes 
attempt  to  explain  this  arrangement  of  the  Psalms 
into  five  books.  The  Hebrew  Midrash  on  Psalm 
i.  I.,  says  :  "  Moses  gave  the  five  books  of  the 
law  to  the  Israelites,  and  as  a  counterpart  of 
them,  David  gave  the  Psalms  consisting  of  five 
books."  This  is,  of  course,  erroneous  ;  the  pres- 
ent collection  of  Psalms  was  made  long  after  the 
time  of  David  ;  but  it  is  not  wnlikely  that  some 
notion  of  a  symmetrical  arrangement  of  the 
Psalms,  to  correspond  to  the  five-fold  division  of 
the  Law,  influenced  the  compilers  of  this  Praise 
Book. 

Of  the  contents  of  this  book,  of  the  peculiar 


THE  POETICAL  BOOK'S.  203 

structure  of  Hebrew  poetry,  and  of  the  historic 
references  in  many  of  the  psalms,  much  might  be 
said,  but  this  investigation  would  lead  us  some- 
what aside  from  our  present  purpose. 

It  may,  however,  be  well  to  add  a  word  or  two 
respecting  some  of  the  inscriptions  and  notations 
borne  by  the  Psalms  in  our  translation.  Many 
of  them  are  composed  of  Hebrew  words,  translit- 
erated into  English,  —  spelled  out  with  English 
letters.  King  James'  translators  did  not  know 
what  they  meant,  so  they  reproduced  them  in 
this  way.  There  has  been  much  discussion  as 
to  the  meaning  of  several  of  them,  and  the  schol- 
ars are  by  no  means  agreed  ;  the  interpretations 
which  follow  are  mainly  those  given  by  Professor 
Murray :  — 

First  is  the  famous  "  Selah,"  which  we  used  to 
hear  pronounced  with  great  solemnity  when  the 
Psalms  were  read.  It  is  a  musical  term,  mean- 
ing, perhaps,  something  like  our  ''Da  Capo''  or, 
possibly,  ''Forte,''  —  a  mark  of  expression  like 
those  Italian  words  which  you  find  over  the  staff 
on  your  sheet  music. 

"  Michtam  "  and  "  Maschil  "  are  also  musical 
notes,  indicating  the  time  of  the  melody,  — met- 
ronome-marks, so  to  speak ;  and  "  Gittith  "  and 
"  Shiggaion  "  are  marks  that  indicate  the  kind 
of  melody  to  which  the  psalm  is  to  be  sung. 

"  Negiloth  "  means  stringed  instruments  ;  it 
indicates  the  kind  of  accompaniment  with  which 
the  psalm  was  to  be  sung.     **  Nehiloth  "  signifies 


204  '^^^^    WROTE    THE  BIBLE? 

pipes  or  flutes,  perhaps  wind  instruments  in  gen- 
eral. 

The  inscription  "To  the  Chief  Musician" 
means,  probably,  "  For  the  Leader  of  the  Choir," 
and  indicates  that  the  original  copy  of  the  psalm 
thus  inserted  in  the  book  was  one  that  had  be- 
longed to  the  chorister  in  the  old  temple. 
"  Upon  Shemimith  "  means  "  set  for  bass  voices  ;  " 
"Upon  Alamoth,"  "set  for  female  voices." 
"  Upon  Muthlabben,"  a  curious  transliteration, 
means  "  arranged  for  training  the  soprano 
voices."  Professor  Murray  supposes  that  this 
particular  psalm  was  used  for  rehearsal  by  the 
women  singers. 

Some  of  these  inscriptions  designate  the  airs 
to  which  the  psalms  were  set,  part  of  which 
seem  to  be  sacred,  and  part  secular.  Such  is 
"  Shushan  Eduth,"  over  Psalm  Ix.,  meaning 
"Fair  as  lilies  is  thy  law,"  apparently  the  name 
of  a  popular  religious  air.  Another,  probably 
secular,  is  over  Psalm  xxii.,  "  Aijeleth  Shahar," 
"  The  stag  at  dawn,"  and  another,  over  Psalm 
Ivi.,  "  Jonathelem  Rechokim,"  which  is,  being  in- 
terpreted, "  O  silent  dove,  what  bringest  thou  us 
from  out  the  distance  1 " 

These  inscriptions  and  many  other  features  of 
this  ancient  Hebrew  poetry  have  furnished  puz- 
zles for  the  unlearned  and  problems  for  the  schol- 
ars, but  the  meaning  of  the  psalms  themselves 
is  for  the  most  part  clear  enough.  The  humble 
disciple    pauses  with    some    bewilderment  over 


THE   POETICAL   BOOKS.  20$ 

"  Neginoth  "  or  "  Michtam  ;  "  he  classes  them 
perhaps  among  the  mysteries  which  the  angels 
desire  to  look  into  ;  but  when  he  reads  a  little 
farther  on,  "  The  Lord  is  my  shepherd  ;  I  shall 
not  want  ;  "  or  "■  God  is  our  refuge  and  strength, 
a  very  present  help  in  trouble  ;  "  or  "  Create  in 
me  a  clean  heart,  O  God,  and  renew  a  right 
spirit  within  me,"  he  knows  full  well  what  these 
words  mean.  There  is  no  life  so  lofty  that  these 
psalms  do  not  lift  up  a  standard  before  it ;  there 
is  no  life  so  lowly  that  it  does  not  find  in  them 
words  that  utter  its  deepest  humility  and  its 
faintest  trust.  Wherever  we  are  these  psalms 
find  us ;  they  search  the  deep  things  of  our 
hearts  ;  they  bring  to  us  the  great  things  of  God. 
Of  how  many  heroic  characters  have  these  old 
temple  songs  been  the  inspiration !  Jewish 
saints  and  patriots  chanted  them  in  the  syna- 
gogue and  on  the  battle-field  ;  apostles  and  evan- 
gelists sung  them  among  perils  of  the  wilderness, 
as  they  traversed  the  rugged  paths  of  Syria  and 
Galatia  and  Macedonia  ;  martyrs  in  Rome  softly 
hummed  them  when  the  lions  near  at  hand  were 
crouching  for  their  prey  :  in  German  forests,  in 
Highland  glens,  Lutherans  and  Covenanters 
breathed  their  lives  out  through  their  cadences  ; 
in  every  land  penitent  souls  have  found  in  them 
words  to  tell  the  story  of  their  sorrow,  and  victo- 
rious souls  the  voices  of  their  triumph;  mothers 
watching  their  babes  by  night  have  cheered  the 
vigil    by    singing   them  ;    mourners    walking    in 


206  IVNO    WROTE    THE   BIBLE? 

lonely  ways  have  been  lighted  by  the  great  hopes 
that  shine  through  them,  and  pilgrims  going 
down  into  the  valley  of  the  shadow  of  death  have 
found  in  their  firm  assurances  a  strong  staff  to 
lean  upon.  Lyrics  like  these,  into  which  so  much 
of  the  divine  truth  was  breathed  when  they  were 
written,  and  which  a  hundred  generations  of  the 
children  of  men  have  saturated  with  tears  and 
praises,  with  battle  shouts  and  sobs  of  pain,  with 
all  the  highest  and  deepest  experiences  of  the 
human  soul,  will  live  as  long  as  joy  lives  and 
long  after  sorrow  ceases  ;  will  live  beyond  this 
life,  and  be  sung  by  pure  voices  in  that  land  from 
which  the  silent  dove,  coming  from  afar,  brings 
us  now  and  then  upon  her  shining  wings  some 
glimpses  of  a  glory  that  eye  hath  never  seen. 


CHAPTER   VIII. 

THE    EARLIER    NEW   TESTAMENT   WRITINGS. 

The  books  of  the  New  Testament  are  now 
before  us.  Our  task  is  not  without  its  difficul- 
ties ;  questions  will  confront  us  which  have  never 
yet  been  answered,  and  probably  will  never  be ; 
nevertheless,  compared  with  the  Old  Testament 
writings,  the  books  of  the  New  Testament  are 
well-known  documents  ;  we  are  on  firm  ground 
of  history  when  we  talk  about  them  ;  of  but  few 
of  the  famous  books  of  Greek  and  Latin  authors 
can  we  speak  so  confidently  as  to  their  date  and 
their  authorship  as  we  can  concerning  most  of 
them. 

We  have  in  the  New  Testament  a  collection  of 
twenty-seven  books,  by  nine  different  authors. 
Of  these  books  thirteen  are  ascribed  to  the  Apos- 
tle Paul ;  five  to  John  the  son  of  Zebedce ;  two 
to  Peter  ;  two  to  Luke  ;  one  each  to  Matthew, 
Mark,  James,  and  Jude,  and  the  authorship  of 
one  is  unknown. 

Of  these  books  it  must  be  first  remarked  that 
they  were  not  only  written  separately^  but  that 
there  is  no  trace  in  any  of  them  of  the  conscious- 
ness on  the  part  of  the  author  that  he  was  con- 


208  IV/IO    WROTE    THE   BIBLE? 

tributing  to  a  collection  of  sacred  writings.  Of 
the  various  epistles  it  is  especially  evident  that 
they  were  written  on  special  occasions,  with 
a  certain  audience  immediately  in  view  ;  the 
thought  that  they  were  to  be  preserved  and  gath- 
ered into  a  book,  which  was  to  be  handed  down 
through  the  coming  centuries  as  an  inspired  vol- 
ume, does  not  appear  to  have  entered  the  mind  of 
the  writer.  But  this  fact  need  not  detract  from 
their  value  ;  often  the  highest  truth  to  which  a 
man  gives  utterance  is  truth  of  whose  value  he 
is  imperfectly  aware. 

It  must  also  be  remembered  that  these  books 
of  the  New  Testament  were  nearly  all  written  by 
apostles.  The  only  clear  exceptions  are  the  Gos- 
pel of  Mark,  the  Gospel  of  Luke,  the  Acts  of  the 
Apostles,  and  the  Epistle  to  the  Hebrews  ;  and 
the  authors  of  these  books,  though  not  apostles, 
were  undoubtedly  in  the  closest  relations  with 
apostolic  men,  and  reflected  their  thought.  These 
apostolic  men  had  received  a  special  training  and 
a  definite  commission  to  bear  witness  of  their 
Master,  to  tell  the  story  of  his  life  and  death, 
and  to  build  up  his  kingdom  in  the  world. 

We  must  admit  that  they  possessed  unusual 
qualifications  for  this  work.  Those  who  had 
been  for  three  years  in  constant  and  loving  inter- 
course with  Jesus  Christ  ought  to  have  been  in- 
spired men.  And  he  promised  them,  before  he 
parted  from  them,  that  the  Spirit  of  truth  should 
come  to  them  and  abide  with  them  to  lead  them 
into  all  truth. 


EARLIER  NEW  TKSTAMEXT  WRiriXGS.     209 

Now  althoiiG^b  vvc  may  find  it  difficult  to  give  a 
satisfactory  definition  of  inspiration  ;  though  we 
may  be  utterly  unable  to  express,  in  any  formu- 
laries of  our  own,  the  influence  of  the  Infinite 
Spirit  upon  human  minds,  yet  we  can  easily  be- 
lieve that  these  apostolic  men  were  exceptionally 
qualified  to  teach  religious  truth.  No  prophet  of 
the  olden  time  had  any  such  preparation  for  his 
mission  as  that  which  was  vouchsafed  to  them. 
No  school  of  the  prophets,  from  the  days  of  Sam- 
uel downward,  could  be  compared  to  that  sacred 
college  of  apostles,  —  that  group  of  divine  peripa- 
tetics, who  followed  their  master  through  Galilee 
and  Perea,  and  sat  down  with  him  day  by  day, 
for  three  memorable  years,  on  the  mountain  top 
and  by  the  lake  side,  to  listen  to  the  words  of  life 
from  the  lips  of  One  who  spake  as  never  man 
spake. 

To  say  that  this  training  made  them  infallible 
is  to  speak  beyond  the  record.  There  is  no 
promise  of  infallibility,  and  the  history  makes  it 
plain  enough  that  no  such  gift  was  bestowed. 
The  Spirit  of  all  truth  was  promised  ;  but  it  was 
promised  for  their  guidance  in  all  their  work,  in 
their  preaching,  their  administration,  their  daily 
conduct  of  life.  There  is  no  hint  anywhere  that 
any  special  illumination  or  protection  would  be 
given  to  them  when  they  took  the  pen  into  their 
.  hands  to  write  ;  they  were  then  inspired  just  as 
much  as  they  were  when  they  stood  up  to  speak, 
or  sat  down  to  ]Dlan  their  missionary  campaigns, 
—  just  as  much  and  no  more. 


2IO  WHO    WROTE    THE  BIBLE? 

Now  it  is  certain  that  the  inspiration  vouch- 
safed them  did  not  make  them  infallible  in  their 
ordinary  teaching,  or  in  their  administration  of 
the  church.  They  made  mistakes  of  a  very  seri- 
ous nature.  It  is  beyond  question  that  the  ma- 
jority of  the  apostles  took  at  the  beginning  an 
erroneous  view  of  the  relation  of  the  Gentiles  to 
the  Christian  church.  They  insisted  that  Gen- 
tiles must  first  become  Jews  before  they  could 
become  Christians  ;  that  the  only  way  into  the 
Christian  church  was  through  the  synagogue  and 
the  temple.  It  was  a  grievous  and  radical  error ; 
it  struck  at  the  foundations  of  Christian  faith. 
And  this  error  was  entertained  by  these  inspired 
apostles  after  the  day  of  Pentecost ;  it  influenced 
their  teaching  ;  it  led  them  to  proclaim  a  defec- 
tive gospel.  This  is  not  the  assertion  of  a  skep- 
tic, it  is  the  clear  testimony  of  the  Apostle  Paul. 
If  you  will  read  the  second  chapter  of  his  Epistle 
to  the  Galatians  you  will  learn  from  the  mouth 
of  an  unimpeachable  witness  that  the  very  leaders 
of  the  apostolic  band,  Peter  and  James  and  John, 
were  greatly  in  error  with  respect  to  a  most  im- 
portant subject  of  the  Christian  teaching.  In 
his  account  of  that  famous  council  at  Antioch, 
Paul  says  that  Peter  and  James  and  John  were 
wholly  in  the  wrong,  and  that  Peter,  for  his  part, 
had  been  acting  disingenuously  :  — 

"But  when  Cephas  came  to  Antioch,  I  resisted- 
him   to  the  face,  because  he  stood  condemned. 
For  before  that  certain  came  from  James,  he  did 


EARLIKR   XKW  TJiSTAAfENT  WRITIXGS.     211 

eat  with  the  Gentiles :  but  when  they  came,  he 
drew  back  and  separated  himself,  fearing  them 
that  were  of  the  circumcision.  And  the  rest  of 
the  Jews  [the  Jewish  Christians]  dissembled 
likewise  with  him  ;  insomuch  that  even  Barnabas 
was  carried  away  with  their  dissimulation.  But 
when  I  saw  that  they  walked  not  uprightly  ac- 
cording to  the  truth  of  the  gospel,  I  said  unto 
Cephas  before  them  all,  If  thou,  being  a  Jew, 
livest  as  do  the  Gentiles,  and  not  as  do  the  Jews, 
how  compellest  thou  the  Gentiles  to  live  as  do 
the  Jews  ? " 

Now  it  is  evident  that  one  or  the  other  of  these 
opposing  parties  in  the  apostolic  college  must 
have  been  in  error,  if  not  greatly  at  fault,  with 
respect  to  this  most  vital  question  of  Christian 
faith  and  doctrine.  When  one  apostle  resists  an- 
other to  the  face  because  he  stands  condemned, 
and  tells  him  that  he  walks  not  uprightly,  accord- 
ing to  the  truth  of  the  gospel,  it  must  be  that  one 
or  the  other  of  them  has,  for  the  time  being, 
ceased  to  be  infallible  in  his  administration  of  the 
truth  of  the  gospel.  And  if  these  apostolic  men, 
sitting  in  their  councils,  teaching  in  their  con- 
gregations, can  make  such  mistakes  as  these, 
how  can  we  be  sure  that  they  never  make  a  mis- 
take when  they  sit  down  to  write,  that  then  their 
words  are  always  the  very  word  of  God  ?  We 
can  have  no  such  assurance.  Indeed  we  are  ex- 
pressly told  that  their  words  are  not,  in  some 
cases,  the  very  word  of  God  ;  for  the  Apostle  Paul 


212  IV//0    WROTE    TJIE   BJBLK? 

plainly  tells  us  over  and  over,  in  his  epistles  to 
the  Corinthians  (i  Cor.  vii.  ;  2  Cor.  xi.),  that  upon 
certain  questions  he  is  giving  his  own  opinion,  — 
that  he  has  no  commandment  of  the  Lord.  With 
respect  to  one  matter  he  says  that  he  is  speaking 
after  his  own  judgment,  but  that  he  "thinks"  he 
has  the  Spirit  of  the  Lord  ;  two  or  three  times  he 
distinctly  declares  that  it  is  he,  Paul,  and  not  the 
Lord,  that  is  speaking. 

All  of  these  facts,  and  others  of  the  same  nature 
clearly  brought  before  us  by  the  New  Testament 
itself,  must  be  held  firmly  in  our  minds  when  we 
make  up  our  theory  of  what  these  writings  are. 
That  these  books  were  written  by  inspired  men 
is,  indeed,  indubitable  ;  that  these  men  possessed 
a  degree  of  inspiration  far  exceeding  that  vouch- 
safed to  any  other  religious  teachers  who  have 
lived  on  the  earth  is  to  my  mind  plain  ;  that  this 
degree  of  inspiration  enabled  them  to  bear  wit- 
ness clearly  to  the  great  facts  of  the  gospel  of 
Christ,  and  to  present  to  us  with  sufficient  full- 
ness and  with  substantial  verity  the  doctrines  of 
the  kingdom  of  heaven  I  am  very  sure  ;  but  that 
they  were  absolutely  protected  against  error,  not 
one  word  in  the  record  affirms,  and  they  them- 
selves have  taken  the  utmost  pains  to  disabuse 
our  minds  of  any  such  impression.  That  is  a 
theory  about  them  which  men  made  up  out  of 
their  own  heads  hundreds  of  years  after  they  were 
dead.  We  shall  certainly  find  that  they  were  not 
infallible  ;  but  we  shall  also  find  that,  in  all  the 


EARLIER   XKW  TKSTA.\fKX'r  WRCriXGS.     213 

great  matters  which  pertain  to  Christian  faith 
and  practice,  when  their  final  testimony  is  col- 
lected and  digested,  it  is  clear,  harmonious,  con- 
sistent, convincing  ;  that  they  have  been  guided 
by  the  Spirit  of  the  Lord  to  tell  us  ihc  truth 
which  we  need  to  know  respecting  the  life  that 
now  is  and  that  which  is  to  come. 

Furthermore,  it  is  a  matter  of  rejoicing  when 
we  take  up  these  books  of  the  New  Testament 
to  find  their  substantial  integrity  unimpeached. 
There  is  no  reason  to  suspect  that  any  important 
changes  have  been  made  in  any  of  these  books 
since  they  came  from  the  hands  of  their  writers. 
Whatever  may  be  said  about  the  first  three  Gos- 
pels (and  we  shall  come  to  that  question  in  our 
next  chapter),  the  remaining  books  of  the  New 
Testament  have  come  down  to  us,  unaltered, 
from  the  men  who  first  wrote  them.  There  is 
none  of  that  process  of  redaction,  and  accretion, 
and  reconstruction  whose  traces  we  have  found 
in  many  of  the  Old  Testament  books.  There 
may  be,  here  and  there,  a  word  or  two  or  a  verse 
or  two  which  has  been  interpolated  by  some 
officious  copyist,  but  these  alterations  are  very 
slight.  The  books  in  our  hands  are  the  very 
same  books  which  were  in  the  hands  of  the  con- 
temporaries and  successors  of  the  apostles. 

I  shall  not  attempt  any  elaborate  discussion  of 
these  twenty-seven  books.  I  only  propose  to  go 
rapidly  over  them,  indicating,  with  the  utmost 
brevity,  the  salient  facts,  so  far  as  we  know  them, 


214  ^^^    WROTE    THE  BIBLE? 

respecting  their  authorship,  the  date  and  the 
place  at  which  they  were  written,  and  the  circum- 
stances which  attended  the  production  of  them. 

From  the  fact  that  the  Gospels  stand  first  in 
the  New  Testament  collection  it  is  generally  as- 
sumed that  they  are  the  earliest  of  the  New  Tes- 
tament books,  but  this  is  an  error.  Several  of 
the  Epistles  were  certainly  written  before  any  of 
the  Gospels  ;  and  one  of  the  Gospels,  that  of 
John,  was  written  later  than  any  of  the  Epistles, 
except  the  three  brief  ones  by  the  same  author. 

The  first  of  these  New  Testament  books  that 
saw  the  light  was,  as  is  generally  supposed,  the 
First  Epistle  to  the  Thessalonians.  It  was  in 
the  year  48  of  our  era  that  St.  Paul  set  out  on  his 
first  missionary  journey  from  Antioch  through 
Cyprus  and  Eastern  Asia  Minor,  a  journey  which 
occupied  about  a  year.  Two  years  afterward, 
his  second  journey  took  him  through  the  eastern 
part  of  Asia  Minor  and  across  the  ^gean  Sea 
to  Europe,  where  he  preached  in  Troas,  Philippi, 
Thessalonica,  Athens,  and  Corinth.  His  stay  in 
Thessalonica  was  interrupted,  as  you  will  re- 
member, by  the  hostility  of  the  Jews,  and  he 
remained  but  a  short  time  in  that  place  ;  long 
enough,  however,  to  gather  a  vigorous  church. 
Afterward,  while  he  was  in  Corinth,  he  learned 
from  one  of  his  helpers  that  the  people  of  Thes- 
salonica had  misunderstood  portions  of  his  teach- 
ing, and  were  in  painful  doubt  on  certain  im- 
portant  subjects.     To  set  them  right  on  these 


EARLIER  NEW  TESTAMENT  WRITINGS.     21$ 

matters  he  wrote  his  first  epistle,  which  was  for- 
warded to  them  from  Corinth,  probably  about 
the  year  52. 

This  explanation  was  also  misunderstood  by 
the  Thessalonians,  and  it  became  necessary  dur- 
ing the  next  year  to  write  to  them  again.  These 
two  letters  are  in  all  probability  the  first  of  the 
Christian  writings  that  we  possess.  They  con- 
tain instruction  and  counsel  of  which  the  Chris- 
tians of  Thessalonica  were  just  then  in  need. 
The  question  which  had  most  disturbed  them 
had  relation  to  the  second  coming  of  Christ. 
They  expected  him  to  return  very  soon  ;  they 
were  impatient  of  delay ;  they  thought  that  those 
who  died  before  his  coming  would  miss  the  glo- 
rious spectacle  ;  and  therefore  they  deplored  the 
hard  fate  of  some  of  their  number  who  had  been 
snatched  away  by  death  before  this  sublime 
event.  In  his  first  epistle  the  apostle  assures 
them  that  the  dead  in  Christ  would  be  raised  to 
participate  in  their  rejoicing.  "We  who  are  alive 
when  the.  Lord  returns,"  he  says,  "will  have  no 
advantage  over  those  who  have  been  called  to 
their  reward  before  us  ;  for  they  will  be  raised 
from  their  graves  to  take  part  with  us  in  this 
great  triumph."  It  is  manifest  that  Paul,  when 
he  wrote  this,  expected  that  Christ  would  return 
to  earth  while  he  was  alive.  Alford  and  other 
conservative  commentators  say  that  he  here  defi- 
nitely expresses  that  expectation  ;  others  deny 
that  these  words  can  be  so  interpreted,  but  con- 


2l6  WHO    WROTE    THE  BIBLE? 

cede  that  he  did  entertain  some  such  expectation. 
"  It  does  not  seem  improper  to  admit,"  says 
Bishop  Ellicott,  "that  in  their  ignorance  of  the 
day  of  the  Lord  the  apostles  might  have  im- 
agined that  he  who  was  coming  would  •come 
speedily."  ^  "  It  is  unmistakably  clear  from  this," 
says  Olshausen,  "that  Paul  deemed  it  possible 
that  he  and  his  contemporaries  might  live  to 
see  the  coming  again  of  Christ."  "The  early 
church,  and  even  the  apostles  themselves,"  say 
Conybeare  and  Howson,  "expected  their  Lord 
to  come  again  in  that  very  generation.  St.  Paul 
himself  shared  in  that  expectation,  but  being 
under  the  guidance  of  the  Spirit  of  truth,  he  did 
not  deduce  any  erroneous  conclusions  from  this 
mistaken  premise."  ^  It  is  evident,  then,  that  St. 
Paul  and  the  rest  of  the  apostles  were  mistaken 
on  this  point ;  this  is  one  of  the  evidences  which 
they  themselves  have  taken  pains  to  point  out  to 
us  of  the  fact  that  though  they  were  inspired 
men  they  were  not  infallible. 

Paul's  first  letter  to  the  Christians  at  Thessa- 
lonica  was  interpreted  by  them,  very  naturally,  as 
teaching  that  the  return  of  the  Lord  was  immi- 
nent ;  and  they  began  to  neglect  their  daily  duties 
and  to  behave  in  the  same  foolish  way  that  men 
have  behaved  in  all  the  later  ages,  when  they  have 
got  their  heads  full  of  this  notion.  His  second 
letter  was  written  chiefly  to  rebuke  this  fanaticism, 

^  Com.  in  loc. 

2  Life  and  Epistles  of  St.  Paul,  i.  401. 


EARLIER  NEW  TESTAMENT  WRITINGS.     21 7 

and  to  bid  them  go  right  on  with  their  work  mak- 
ing ready  for  the  Lord's  coming  by  a  faithful 
discharge  of  the  duties  of  the  present  hour.  St. 
Paul  might  have  been  mistaken  in  his  theories 
about  the  return  of  his  Master,  but  his  practical 
wisdom  was  not  at  fault  ;  it  was  his  spirit  that 
survived  in  Abraham  Davenport,  the  Connecticut 
legislator,  who,  in  the  "dark  day"  of  1780  when 
his  colleagues  thought  that  the  end  of  the  world 
had  come,  refused  to  vote  for  the  adjournment  of 
the  House,  but  insisted  on  calling  up  the  next 
bill  ;  saying  as  Whittier  has  phrased  it :  — 

"  *  This  well  may  be 
The  Day  of  Judgment  which  the  world  awaits; 
But  be  it  so  or  not,  I  only  know 
My  present  duty,  and  my  Lord's  command 
To  occupy  till  he  come.     So  at  the  post 
Where  he  hath  set  me  in  his  providence, 
I  choose,  for  one,  to  meet  him  face  to  face,  — 
No  faithless  servant  frightened  from  my  task, 
But  ready  when  the  Lord  of  the  harvest  calls ; 
And  therefore,  with  all  reverence,  I  would  say, 
Let  God  do  his  work,  we  will  see  to  ours. 
Bring  in  the  candles.'     And  they  brought  them  in.** 

These  two  letters  are,  then,  the  earliest  of  the 
New  Testament  writings.  Like  most  of  the  other 
Epistles  of  Paul  they  begin  with  a  salutation. 
The  common  salutation  with  which  the  Greeks 
began  their  letters  was  "  Live  well !  "  that  of  the 
Roman  was  "  Health  to  you  !  "  But  Paul  almost 
always  began  with  a  Christian  greeting,  "  Grace, 
mercy,  and  peace  to  you."  In  these  letters  he 
associates  with  himself  in  this  greeting  his  two 
companions,  Timothy  and  Silas. 


2l8  lVI/0    WROTE    THEBJBLEl 

The  last  words  of  his  epistles  are  almost  always 
personal  messages  to  individuals  known  to  him 
in  the  several  churches,  —  to  men  and  women 
who  had  "  labored  with  him  in  the  gospel,"  —  cas- 
ual yet  significant  words,  which  "show  a  heart 
within  blood-tinctured,  of  a  veined  humanity." 
The  letters  were  written  by  an  amanuensis,  —  all 
save  these  concluding  words  which  Paul  added  in 
his  own  chirography.  He  seems  to  desire  to  put 
more  of  himself  into  these  personal  messages 
than  into  the  didactic  and  doctrinal  parts  of  his 
epistles.  At  the  end  of  the  second  of  the  let- 
ters to  the  Thessalonians  we  find  these  words  : 
"The  salutation  of  me  Paul  with  mine  own  hand, 
which  is  the  token  in  every  epistle  :  so  I  write  ; " 
better,  perhaps,  "This  is  my  handwriting."  This 
signature  and  this  concluding  greeting  are  to  be 
proof  to  them  of  the  genuineness  of  the  letter. 
It  appears  from  other  references  in  the  same 
epistle  (ch.  ii.  2)  that  some  busybody  had  been 
writing  a  letter  to  the  Thessalonians,  which  pur- 
ported to  be  a  message  from  Paul ;  he  puts  them 
on  their  guard  against  these  supposititious  docu- 
ments. At  the  end  of  the  letter  to  the  Galatians 
you  find  in  the  old  version  :  "  Ye  see  how  large 
a  letter  I  have  written  unto  you  with  my  own 
hand  ; "  but  the  right  rendering  is  in  the  new  ver- 
sion :  "  See  with  how  large  letters  [what  a  bold 
chirography]  I  have  written  unto  you  with  my 
own  hand."  "These  last  coarse  characters  are 
my  own  handwriting."     It  is  almost  universally 


EARLIER  NEW  TESTAMENT  WRITINGS.     219 

assumed  that  Paul  was  a  sufferer  from  some  af- 
fection of  the  eyes  ;  the  large  letters  are  thus 
explained.  Mr.  Conybeare,  in  a  foot-note  on  this 
passage,  speaks  of  receiving  a  letter  from  the 
venerable  Neander  a  few  months  before  his  death, 
which  illustrates  this  point  in  a  striking  manner : 
"His  letter,"  says  Mr.  Conybeare,  "is  written  in 
the  fair  and  flowing  hand  of  an  amanuensis,  but 
it  ends  with  a  few  irregular  lines  in  large  and 
rugged  characters,  written  by  himself  and  ex- 
plaining the  cause  of  his  needing  the  services  of 
an  amanuensis,  namely  the  weakness  of  his  eyes 
(probably  the  very  malady  of  St.  Paul).  It  was 
impossible  to  read  this  autograph  without  think- 
ing of  the  present  passage,  and  observing  that  he 
might  have  expressed  himself  in  the  very  words 
of  St.  Paul:  'Behold  the  size  of  the  characters 
in  which  I  have  written  to  you  with  my  own 
hand.'  "  1 

There  is  another  touching  sentence  at  the  end 
of  Paul's  letter  to  the  Colossians  which  was  writ- 
ten from  Rome  when  he  was  prisoner  there  : 
"  The  salutation  of  me  Paul  with  mine  own 
hand.  Remember  my  bonds.  Grace  be  with 
you.  Amen."  This  seems  to  say  :  "  There  is  a 
manacle,  you  remember,  on  my  wrist.  I  cannot 
write  very  well.  Grace  be  with  you."  I  will 
only  add  that  the  subscriptions  which  follow  the 
epistles  in  the  old  version  are  no  part  of  the  epis- 
tles,  and   in   several   cases  they  are   erroneous. 

1  Life  and  Epistles  of  St.  Patil,  ii.  149. 


220  WHO    WROTE    THE   BIBLE? 

They  embody  conjectures  of  later  copyists,  or 
traditions  which  are  without  foundation.  These 
letters  to  the  Thessalonians,  for  example,  are  said 
to  have  been  written  from  Athens  ;  but  we  know 
that  they  were  written  from  Corinth.  For  Paul 
expressly  says  (iii.  6)  that  the  letter  was  written 
immediately  after  the  return  of  Timothy  from 
Thessalonica,  and  we  are  told,  in  Acts  xviii,  5, 
that  Silas  and  Timothy  joined  him  at  Corinth 
after  he  had  left  Athens  and  had  gone  to  Corinth. 
Besides,  he  associates  Silas  and  Timothy  with 
himself  in  his  greetings,  and  they  were  not  with 
him  at  Athens.  The  evidence  is  therefore  con- 
clusive, that  the  subscription  is  incorrect.  You 
will  not  find  any  of  these  subscriptions  in  the 
new  version.  Some  of  them  are  undoubtedly  cor- 
rect, but  some  of  them  are  not ;  and  in  no  case 
is  the  subscription  an  integral  part  of  the  epis- 
tle. The  excision  of  these  traditional  addenda 
was  one  of  the  first  results  of  what  is  called  the 
**  Higher  Criticism,"  and  admirably  illustrates  the 
uses  of  this  kind  of  criticism,  which,  to  some  of 
our  devout  brethren,  is  such  a  frightful  thing. 
Why  should  it  be  regarded  as  a  dangerous,  al- 
most a  diabolical  proceeding,  to  let  the  Bible  tell 
its  own  story  about  its  origin,  instead  of  trusting 
to  rabbinical  traditions  and  mediaeval  guesses  and 
a  priori  theories  of  seventeenth  century  theo- 
logians } 

These  two  letters  were,  no  doubt,  read  in  the 
assemblies  of  the  Thessalonian  Christian*  more 


EARLIER  NEW  TESTAMENT  WRITINGS.     221 

than  once,  and  were  sacredly  treasured  by  them. 
They  were  the  only  Christian  documents  pos- 
sessed by  them  ;  and  there  was,  at  this  time,  no 
other  church  so  rich  as  they  were.  The  Gospels, 
as  we  have  them  now,  were  not  then  in  the  pos- 
session of  any  Christian  church.  The  story  of 
the  gospel  had  been  repeated  to  them  by  Paul 
and  Silas  and  Timothy,  and  had  been  diligently 
impressed  upon  their  memories  ;  but  it  was  only 
an  oral  gospel  that  had  been  delivered  to  them  ; 
the  written  record  of  Christ's  life  and  sayings 
was  not  in  their  hands.  They  remembered, 
therefore,  the  things  which  had  been  told  them 
concerning  the  life  and  death  of  Jesus  Christ  ; 
they  repeated  them  over  one  to  another,  and 
they  explained  and  supplemented  these  remem- 
bered words  by  the  two  letters  which  they  had 
received  from  the  great  apostle. 

The  next  year  after  Paul  wrote  these  letters  to 
the  Thessalonians  from  Corinth,  he  returned  to 
Jerusalem  and  Antioch  (Acts  xviii.  18-23),  and 
the  year  following,  probably  54,  he  set  out  on  his 
third  missionary  journey,  which  took  him  through 
Galatia  and  Phrygia  in  Asia  Minor  to  Ephesus, 
where  his  home  was  for  two  or  three  years. 
While  there,  perhaps  in  the  year  57,  he  wrote  the 
first  of  his  letters  to  the  Christians  in  Corinth. 
Shortly  after  writing  it  he  went  on  to  Macedonia, 
whence  the  second  of  his  letters  to  the  Corin- 
thians was  written  ;  presently  he  followed  his 
letters  to  Corinth,  and  while   there,  probably  in 


222  lVI/0    WROTE    THE  BIBLE? 

58,  he  wrote  his  letter  to  the  Galatians.     Galatia 
was  a  province  rather  than   a  city  ;  there  may 
have  been  several  churches,  which  had  been  es- 
tablished by  Paul,  in  the  province  ;  and  this  may 
have  been   a  circular  letter,  to  be  handed  about 
among  them,  copies  of  it  to  be  made,  perhaps,  for 
the  use  of  each  of  the  churches.     It  was  in  the 
spring  of  the  next  year,   while  he  was  still   in 
Corinth,  that  he  wrote  his  letter  to  the  Romans, 
the  longest,  and  from  some  points  of  view,  the 
most  important  of  his  epistles.     He  had  never, 
at  the  time  of  this  writing,  been  in  Rome  (ch.  i. 
13),  but  he  had  met  Roman  Christians  in  many 
of  the  cities  of  the  East  where  he  had  lived  and 
taught ;   and,   doubtless,   since   all    roads   led  to 
Rome,  and  the  metropolis  of  the  world  was  con- 
stantly drawing  to  itself   men  of   every  nation 
and  province,  many  of  Paul's  converts  in  Asia 
and  Macedonia  and  Achaia  had  made  their  way 
to  the  Eternal  City,  and  had  joined  themselves 
there   to   the    Christian    community.     The   long 
list  of  personal  greetings  with  which  the  epistle 
closes  shows  how  large  was  his  acquaintance  in 
the  Roman  church,  and,  doubtless,  by  his  corre- 
spondence, he   had   become  fully  informed   con- 
cerning the  needs  of  these  disciples.     He  tells  the 
Romans,  in  this  letter,  that  he  hopes  to  visit  them 
by  and  by ;  he  did  not,  however,  at  that  time,  ex- 
pect to  appear  among  them  as  a  prisoner.     This 
was  the  fate  awaiting  him.     Shortly  after  writing 
this  epistle  he  returned  from  Corinth  to  Jerusa- 


EARLIER   XKW  TKSTAMEXT  WRJTfNCS.     223 

lem,  bearing  a  collection  which  had  been  gath- 
ered in  luirope  for  the  poor  Christians  of  the 
mother  church  ;  at  Jerusalem  he  was  arrested  ; 
in  that  city  and  in  Caesarea  he  was  for  a  long  time 
imprisoned  ;  finally,  probably  in  the  spring  of  61, 
he  was  sent  as  a  prisoner  to  Rome,  because  he 
had  appealed  to  the  imperial  court ;  and  here,  for 
at  least  two  years,  he  dwelt  a  prisoner,  in  lodg- 
ings of  his  own,  chained  by  day  and  night  to  a 
Roman  soldier.  During  this  imprisonment,  prob- 
ably in  62,  he  wrote  the  letters  to  the  Colos- 
sians,  the  Ephesians,  the  Philippians,  and  Phile- 
mon. From  the  first  imprisonment  he  seems  to 
have  been  released;  and  to  have  gone  westward 
as  far  as  Spain,  and  eastward  as  far  as  Asia 
Minor,  preaching  the  gospel.  During  this  jour- 
ney he  is  supposed  to  have  written  the  first  letter 
to  Timothy  and  the  letter  to  Titus.  At  length 
he  was  re-arrested,  and  brought  to  Rome  where, 
in  the  spring  of  6Z,  just  before  his  death,  he 
wrote  the  second  letter  to  Timothy,  the  last  of 
his  thirteen  epistles. 

Much  of  this  account  of  the  late  years  of  Paul's 
life,  following  the  close  of  his  first  two  years  at 
Romej  where  the  narrative,  in  the  Acts  of  the 
Apostles  abruptly  leaves  him,  is  traditional  and 
conjectural  ;  I  do  not  give  it  to  you  as  indubitable 
history  ;  it  furnishes  the  most  reasonable  explana- 
tion that  has  been  suggested  of  that  productive 
activity  of  his  which  finds  its  chief  expression  in 
the  letters  that  bear  his  name. 


224  ^^'^^^    WROTE    THE  BIBLE? 

Of  these  letters  it  is  impossible  to  give  any  ad- 
equate account  in  this  place.  Let  it  suffice  to 
say  that  the  principal  theme  of  the  two  epistles 
to  the  Thessalonians  is  the  expected  return  of 
Christ  to  earth  ;  that  those  to  the  Corinthians 
are  largely  occupied  with  questions  of  Christian 
casuistry  ;  that  those  to  the  Galatians  and  the 
Romans  are  the  great  doctrinal  epistles  unfold- 
ing the  relation  of  Christianity  to  Judaism,  and 
discussing  the  philosophy  of  the  new  creed  ;  that 
the  Epistle  to  the  Philippians  is  a  luminous  expo- 
sition of  Christianity  as  a  personal  experience  ; 
that  those  to  the  Colossians  and  the  Ephesians 
are  the  defense  of  Christianity  against  the  insid- 
ious errors  of  the  Gnostics,  and  a  wonderful  rev- 
elation of  the  immanent  Christ  ;  that  the  Epistle 
to  Philemon  is  a  letter  of  personal  friendship, 
embodying  a  great  principle  of  practical  religion  ; 
and  that  the  letters  to  Timothy  and  Titus  are  the 
counsel  of  an  aged  apostle  to  younger  men  in  the 
ministry. 

*'  May  we  go  farther,"  with  Archdeacon  Farrar, 
*'and  attempt,  in  one  or  two  words,  a  description 
of  each  separate  epistle,  necessarily  imperfect 
from  the  very  brevity,  and  yet  perhaps  expres- 
sive of  some  one  main  characteristic.  If  so  we 
might  perhaps  say  that  the  First  Epistle  to  the 
Thessalonians  is  the  epistle  of  consolation  in 
the  hope  of  Christ's  return  ;  and  the  second  of 
the  immediate  hindrances  to  that  return,  and  our 
duties  with  regard   to  it.     The  First  Epistle  to 


EARLIER  NEW  TESTAMENT  WRITINGS.     225 

the  Corinthians  is  the  solution  of  practical  prob- 
lems in  the  light  of  eternal  principles  ;  the  sec- 
ond, an  impassioned  defense  of  the  apostle's  im- 
pugned authority,  his  Apologia  pro  vita  sua. 
The  Epistle  to  the  Galatians  is  the  epistle  of 
freedom  from  the  bondage  of  the  law  ;  that  to  the 
Romans  of  justification  by  faith.  The  Epistle 
to  the  Philippians  is  the  epistle  of  Christian  grat- 
itude and  of  Christian  joy  in  sorrow  ;  that  to  the 
Colossians  the  epistle  of  Christ  the  universal 
Lord  ;  that  to  the  Ephesians,  so  rich  and  many- 
sided,  is  the  epistle  of  the  '  heavenlies,'  the  epis- 
tle of  grace,  the  epistle  of  ascension  with  the 
ascended  Christ,  the  epistle  of  Christ  in  his  o-ne 
and  universal  church ;  that  to  Philemon  the 
Magna  Charta  of  Emancipation.  The  First 
Epistle  to  Timothy  and  that  to  Titus  are  the 
manuals  of  a  Christian  pastor ;  the  Second  Epis- 
tle to  Timothy  is  the  last  message  of  a  Christian 
ere  his  death."  ^ 

The  genuineness  of  several  of  these  books  has 
been  assailed  by  modern  criticism.  The  author- 
ship of  Paul  has  been  disputed  in  the  cases  of 
nine  out  of  the  thirteen  epistles.  The  Epistle  to 
the  Galatians,  that  to  the  Romans,  and  the  two 
to  the  Corinthians  are  undisputed  ;  all  the  rest 
have  been  spoken  against.  I  have  attended  to 
these  criticisms  ;  but  the  reasons  urged  for  deny- 
ing the  Pauline  authorship  of  these  epistles  seem 
to  me  in  many  cases  far-fetched  and  fanciful  in 

1   The  Life  and  Work  of  St.  PiUiI,  chap.  xlvi. 


226  IVI/O    WROTE    THE   BIBLE  i 

the  extreme.  Respecting  the  pastoral  epistles, 
those  to  Timothy  and  Titus,  it  may  be  admitted 
that  there  are  some  difficulties.  It  is  not  easy 
for  us  to  understand  how  there  could  have  been 
developed  in  the  churches  at  that  early  day  so 
much  of  an  ecclesiasticism  as  these  letters  as- 
sume ;  and  there  is  force  in  the  suggestion  that 
the  peculiar  errors  against  which  some  of  these 
counsels  are  directed  belong  to  a  later  day  rather 
than  to  the  apostolic  age.  To  this  it  may  be  re- 
plied that  ecclesiasticism  is  a  weed  which  grows 
rapidly  when  once  it  has  taken  root,  and  that  the 
germs  of  Gnosticism  were  in  the  church  from  the 
earliest  day.  And  although  the  vocabulary  .of 
these  epistles  differs  in  rather  a  striking  way,  as 
Dr.  Harnack  has  pointed  out,^  from  that  of  Paul's 
other  epistles,  I  can  easily  imagine  that  in  famil- 
iar letters  to  his  pupils  he  would  drop  into  a  dif- 
ferent style  from  that  in  which  he  wrote  his  more 
elaborate  theological  treatises.  One  could  find 
in  the  letters  of  Macaulay  or  Charles  Kingsley 
many  words  that  he  would  not  find  in  the  history 
of  the  one  or  the  sermons  of  the  other.  Putting 
all  these  objections  together,  I  do  not  find  in 
them  any  adequate  reason  for  denying  that  these 
epistles  were  written  by  St.  Paul.  Indeed,  it 
seems  to  me  incredible  that  the  Second  Epistle 
of  Timothy  should  have  been  written  by  any 
other  hand  than  that  which  wrote  the  undoubted 
letters  to  the  Corinthians  and  the  Romans. 

1  Encyc.  Brit.,  art.  "  Pastoral  Epistles." 


EARLIER  i\E\V   TESTAMENT  WRITINGS.     22/ 

When  vvc  come  to  the  other  disputed  epistles, 
those  to  the  Thessalonians,  the  Ephesians,  the 
Philippians,  and  the  Colossians,  I  confess  that  the 
doubts  of  their  genuineness  seem  to  me  the  out- 
come of  a  willful  dogmatism.  "What  Archdeacon 
Farrar  says  of  the  cavils  respecting  the  epistles 
to  the  Philippians  applies  to  much  of  this  theo- 
retic criticism  :  "  The  Tubingen  school,  in  its 
earlier  stages,  attacked  it  with  the  monotonous 
arguments  of  their  credulous  skepticism.  With 
those  critics,  if  an  epistle  touches  on  points 
which  make  it  accord  with  the  narrative  of  the 
Acts  it  was  forged  to  suit  them ;  if  it  seems  to 
disagree  with  them  the  discrepancy  shows  that 
it  is  spurious.  If  the  diction  is  Pauline  it  stands 
forth  as  a  proved  imitation  ;  if  it  is  un-Pauline  it 
could  not  have  proceeded  from  the  apostle."  ^ 
One  grows  weary  with  this  reckless  and  carping 
skepticism,  much  of  which  springs  from  a  theory 
of  a  permanent  schism  in  the  early  church,  —  a 
theory  which  was  mainly  evolved  from  the  inner 
consciousness  of  some  mystical  German  philos- 
opher, and  which  has  been  utterly  exploded. 

We  may,  then,  receive  as  genuine  the  thirteen 
epistles  ascribed  to  St.  Paul ;  and  we  have  good 
reason  for  believing  that  we  have  them  in  their 
integrity,  substantially  as  he  wrote  them. 

The  title  of  one  of  these  epistles,  that  to  the 
Ephesians,  is,  however,  undoubtedly  erroneous. 
As  Mr.  Conybeare  says,  the  least  disputable  fact 

1  Life  and  Work  of  St.  Paul,  chap.  xlvi. 


228  nilO    WROTE    THE   BIBLE? 

about  the  letter  is  that  it  was  not  addressed  to 
the  Ephesians.  For  it  is  incredible  that  Paul 
should  have  described  a  church  in  whose  fellow- 
ship he  had  lived  and  labored  for  two  years  as 
one  of  whose  religious  life  he  knew  only  by  re- 
port (ch.  i.  15)  ;  and  it  is  strange  that  he  should 
not  have  a  single  word  of  greeting  to  any  of 
these  Ephesian  Christians.  Several  of  the  early 
Christian  fathers  testify  that  the  words  "  at  Ephe- 
sus  "  are  omitted  from  the  first  verse  of  the  man- 
uscript known  to  them.  The  two  oldest  manu- 
scripts now  in  existence,  that  of  the  Vatican  and 
that  known  as  the  Sinaitic  manuscript,  both  omit 
these  words.  The  destination  of  the  epistle  is 
not  indicated.  The  place  filled  by  the  words  "at 
Ephesus"  is  left  blank.  Thus  it  reads  :  "  Paul,  an 
apostle  of  Christ  Jesus  through  the  will  of  God, 
to   the   saints    which    are  and    the  faithful 

in  Christ  Jesus."  Some  of  the  old  fathers  expa- 
tiate on  this  title,  drawing  distinctions  between 
the  saints  which  are  and  the  saints  which  see7n 
to  be,  —  an  amusing  example  of  exegetical  thor- 
oughness. Undoubtedly  the  letter  was  designed 
as  a  circular  letter  to  several  churches  in  West- 
ern Asia,  —  Laodicea  among  the  number  ;  and 
a  blank  was  left  in  each  copy  made,  in  which  the 
name  of  the  church  to  which  it  was  delivered 
might  be  entered.  Some  knowing  copyist  at  a 
later  day  wrote  the  words  "at  Ephesus"  into 
one  of  these  copies  ;  and  it  is  from  this  that  the 
manuscript  descended  from  which  our  translation 
was  made. 


EARIJKR    \EW    lliS'rAMl-.jyj-  W'RJTJXCS.     229 

That  these  letters  of  Paul  were  highly  prized 
and  carefully  preserved  by  the  churches  to  which 
they  were  written  we  cannot  doubt  ;  and  as  from 
time  to  time  messengers  passed  back  and  forth 
between  the  churches,  copies  were  made  of  the 
letters  for  exchange.  The  church  at  Thcssalo- 
nica  would  send  a  copy  of  its  letter  to  the  church 
at  Philippi  and  to  the  church  at  Corinth  and  to 
the  church  at  Ephesus,  and  would  receive  in  re- 
turn copies  of  their  letters  ;  and  thus  the  writings 
of  Paul  early  obtained  a  considerable  distribution. 
We  have  an  illustration  of  these  exchanges  in 
the  closing  words  of  the  Epistle  to  the  Colossians 
(iv.  16)  :  "  And  when  this  epistle  hath  been  read 
among  you,  cause  that  it  be  read  also  in  the 
church  of  the  Laodiceans ;  and  that  you  also  read 
the  epistle  from  Laodicea."  It  is  probable  that 
the  last-named  epistle  was  the  one  of  which  we 
have  just  been  speaking,  called  in  our  version, 
the  Epistle  to  the  Ephesians. 

,  The  Epistle  to  the  Hebrews  is  ascribed  in  its 
title  to  "  Paul  the  Apostle."  But  the  title  was 
added  at  a  late  date  ;  the  Greek  Testaments  con- 
tain only  the  brief  title  "To  the  Hebrews,"  leav- 
ing the  question  of  authorship  unsettled.  Of  all 
the  other  epistles  ascribed  to  Paul  his  name  is 
the  first  word  ;  this  epistle  does  not  announce  its 
author.  In  the  early  church  there  was  much  con- 
troversy about  it ;  the  Eastern  Christians  gener- 
ally ascribed  it  to  Paul,  while  the  Western  church, 
until  the  fourth  century,  refused  to  recognize  his 


230  WHO    WROTE    THE  BIBLE? 

authorship.  One  sentence  in  the  epistle  (ch.  ii. 
3)  is  supposed  to  signify  that  the  writer  was  of 
the  number  of  those  who  had  received  the  gospel 
at  second  hand,  and  this  was  an  admission  that 
Paul  always  refused  to  make ;  he  steadily  con- 
tended that  his  knowledge  of  the  gospel  was  as 
direct  and  immediate  and  copious  as  that  of  any 
of  the  apostles.  For  these  and  other  reasons  it 
has  been  contended  that  the  letter  was  written 
by  some  one  not  an  apostle,  but  an  associate  and 
pupil  of  apostolic  men  ;  the  most  plausible  con- 
jecture ascribes  it  to  Apollos.  The  date  of  it  is 
not  easily  fixed  ;  it  was  probably  written  before 
the  destruction  of  Jerusalem ;  such  an  elaborate 
discussion  of  the  Jewish  ritual  would  scarcely 
have  been  made  after  the  temple  was  destroyed, 
without  any  reference  to  the  fact  of  its  destruc- 
tion. 

Following  the  letter  to  the  Hebrews  in  our 
New  Testament  are  seven  epistles  ascribed  to 
four  different  authors,  James,  Peter,  John,  and 
Jude.  These  are  commonly  called  the  "  Catholic 
Epistles,"  —  catholic  meaning  general  or  univer- 
sal, —  since  they  are  not  addressed  to  any  one 
congregation,  but  to  the  whole  church,  to  Chris- 
tians in  general.  Two  of  them,  however,  the 
Second  and  Third  of  John,  hardly  deserve  the 
designation,  for  they  are  addressed  to  individuals. 

The  author  of  the  Epistle  of  James  is  not  easily 
identified.  There  are  numerous  Jameses  in  the 
New  Testament  history  ;  we  do  not  readily  dis- 


EARLIER  NEW  TESTAMENT  WRITINGS.     23 1 

tinguish  them.  It  was  not  James  the  son  of 
Zebedee,  for  he  was  put  to  death  by  Herod  only- 
six  or  seven  years  after  the  death  of  our  Lord 
(Acts  xii.  2).  Probably  this  was  the  one  named 
James  the  Lord's  brother,  who  was  a  near  rela- 
tive of  Jesus,  brother  or  cousin,  and  who  was  the 
leading  man  —  perhaps  they  called  him  bishop  — 
of  the  church  at  Jerusalem.  He  may,  also,  be 
identical  with  that  James  the  son  of  Alpheus, 
who  was  one  of  the  apostles.  The  letter  was  is- 
sued at  an  early  day,  probably  before  the  year  60. 
It  was  addressed  to  the  "twelve  tribes  which  are 
of  the  Dispersion,"  —  that  was  the  name  by  which 
the  Jews  scattered  through  Asia  and  Europe 
were  generally  known.  To  Christians  who  had 
been  Jews,  therefore,  this  letter  was  written  ;  in 
this  respect  it  is  to  be  classed  with  the  letter  to 
the  Hebrews  ;  but  in  the  tenor  of  its  teaching  it 
is  wholly  unlike  that  letter ;  instead  of  putting 
emphasis  on  the  ritual  and  symbolical  elements 
of  religion,  it  leaves  these  wholly  on  one  side, 
and  makes  the  ethical  contents  of  the  Christian 
teaching  the  matter  of  supreme  concern.  There 
is  more  of  applied  Christianity  in  this  than  in 
any  other  of  the  epistles  ;  and  both  in  style  and 
in  substance  we  are  reminded  by  it  of  the  teach- 
ing of  our  Lord  more  strongly  than  by  any  other 
portion  of  the  New  Testament. 

The  First  Epistle  of  Peter  is  addressed  to  the 
same  class  of  persons,  —  to  **  the  elect  who  are 
sojourners  of  the  Dispersion  "  in  various  prov- 


232  WHO    WROTE    THE  BIBLE? 

inces  of  Asia  Minor.  The  only  intimation  of  the 
locality  of  the  writing  is  contained  in  one  of  the 
concluding  verses:  ''She  that  is  in  Babylon, 
elect  together  with  you,  saluteth  you."  What 
Babylon  is  this  ?  Is  it  the  famous  capital  of  the 
Euphrates  ?  So  some  have  supposed,  for  there 
is  a  tradition  that  Peter  journeyed  to  the  distant 
East  and  founded  Christian  churches  among  the 
Jews,  who,  in  large  numbers,  were  dwelling  there. 
Others  take  it  to  be  the  mystical  Babylon,  — 
Rome  upon  her  seven  hills.  This  theory  helps  to 
support  the  contention,  for  which  there  is  small 
evidence,  that  Peter  was  the  first  bishop  of  Rome. 
The  first  conjecture  has  a  firmer  basis.  But  who 
is  "she"  that  sends  her  salutations  to  these 
Asian  saints  .-*  Was  it  the  church  or  the  wife  of 
the  apostle.?  Either  interpretation  is  difficult; 
I  cannot  choose  between  them.  Of  the  origin 
of  this  letter  we  know  little  ;  but  there  is  noth- 
ing in  it  inconsistent  with  the  unbroken  tradi- 
tion which  ascribes  it  to  the  impetuous  leader  of 
the  apostolic  band.  Like  the  Epistle  of  James  it 
is  full  of  a  strenuous  morality  ;  while  it  does  not 
disregard  the  essentials  of  Christian  doctrine  it 
puts  the  emphasis  on  Christian  conduct. 

The  Second  Epistle  of  Peter  is  the  one  book 
of  the  New  Testament  concerning  whose  genu- 
ineness there  is  most  doubt.  From  the  earliest 
days  the  canonicity  of  this  book  has  been  dis- 
puted. It  is  not  mentioned  by  any  early  Chris- 
tian writer  before  the  third  century  ;  and  Origen, 


EARLIER  NEW  TESTAMENT  WRITINGS.     233 

who  is  the  first  to  allude  to  the  book,  testifies 
that  its  genuineness  has  been  doubted.  The 
early  versions  do  not  contain  it ;  Eusebius  marks 
it  doubtful  ;  Erasmus  and  Calvin,  in  later  times, 
regarded  it  as  a  dubious  document.  It  seems  al- 
most incredible,  with  such  witnesses  against  it, 
that  the  book  should  be  genuine  ;  but  if  it  is  not 
the  work  of  St.  Peter  it  is  a  fraudulent  writing, 
for  it  openly  announces  him  as  its  author  and  re- 
fers to  his  first  epistle.  There  is  a  remarkable 
similarity  between  this  letter  and  the  short  Epis- 
tle of  Jude  ;  it  would  appear  that  this  must  be  an 
imitation  and  enlargement  of  that,  or  that  a  con- 
densation of  this.  There  are  some  passages  in 
this  book  with  which  we  could  ill  afford  to  part, 
—  with  which,  indeed,  we  never  shall  part  ;  for 
whether  they  were  written  by  Peter  or  by  an- 
other they  express  clear  and  indubitable  verities  ; 
and  even  though  the  author,  like  that  Balaam 
whom  he  quotes,  may  have  been  no  true  prophet, 
he  was  constrained,  even  as  Balaam  was,  to  utter 
some  wholesome  and  stimulating  truth. 

The  three  epistles  of  John  are  the  last  words 
of  the  disciple  that  Jesus  loved.  The  evidence 
of  their  genuineness,  particularly  of  the  first  of 
them,  is  abundant  and  convincing  ;  Polycarp,  who 
was  John's  pupil  and  friend,  quotes  from  this 
book,  and  there  is  an  unbroken  chain  of  testi- 
mony from  the  early  fathers  respecting  it.  Of 
course  those  who  have  determined,  for  dogmatic 
reasons,  to  reject  the  Fourth  Gospel,  are  bound 


234  ^-^^^    WROTE    THE  BIBLE? 

to  reject  these  epistles  also  ;  but  that  procedure 
is  wholly  unwarranted,  as  we  shall  see  in  the 
next  chapter.  These  epistles  were  probably 
written  from  Ephesus  during  the  last  years  of  the 
first  century.  The  first  is  a  meditation  on  the 
great  fact  of  the  incarnation  and  its  mystic  rela- 
tion to  the  life  of  men  ;  it  sounds  the  very  depths 
of  that  wonderful  revelation  which  was  made  to 
the  world  in  the  person  and  work  of  Jesus  Christ. 
The  other  two  are  personal  letters,  wherein  the 
fragrance  of  a  gracious  friendship  still  lingers, 
and  in  which  we  see  how  the  spirit  of  Christ  was 
beginning,  even  then,  to  transfigure  with  its  be- 
nignant gentleness  the  courtesies  of  life. 

The  Book  of  Jude,  the  last  of  the  epistles,  is 
one  of  whose  author  we  have  little  knowledge. 
He  styles  himself  "  the  brother  of  James,"  but 
that,  as  we  have  seen,  is  a  vague  description. 
Of  the  close  relation  between  this  letter  and  Sec- 
ond Peter  I  have  spoken.  It  is  not  in  the  early 
Syriac  version  ;  Eusebius  and  Origen  question 
it,  and  Chrysostom  does  not  mention  it  ;  we  may 
fairly  doubt  whether  it  came  from  the  hand  of 
any  apostolic  witness.  One  feature  of  this  short 
letter  deserves  mention  ;  the  writer  quotes  from 
one  of  the  old  apocryphal  books,  the  Book  of 
Enoch,  treating  it  as  Scripture.  If  a  New  Tes- 
tament citation  authenticates  an  ancient  writing, 
Enoch  must  be  regarded  as  an  inspired  book. 
We  must  either  reject  Jude  or  accept  Enoch,  or 
abandon  the  rule  that  makes  a  New  Testament 


EARLIER  NEW  TESTAMENT  WRITINGS.     235 

citation  the  proof  of  Old  Testament  canonicity. 
The  abandonment  of  the  rule  is  the  simplest  and 
the  most  rational  solution  of  the  difficulty. 

I  have  now  run  rapidly  over  the  history  of 
twenty-one  of  the  twenty-seven  books  of  the  New 
Testament,  —  all  of  the  Epistles  of  the  inspired 
book.  The  end  of  the  first  century  found  these 
books  scattered  through  Europe  and  Asia,  each 
probably  in  possession  of  the  church  to  which  it 
had  been  sent ;  those  addressed  to  individuals 
probably  in  the  hands  of  their  children  or  chil- 
dren's children.  Some  exchanges,  such  as  I  have 
suggested,  had  taken  place  ;  and  some  churches 
might  have  possessed  several  of  these  apostolic 
letters,  but  there  was  yet  no  collection  of  them. 
Of  the  beginning  of  this  collection  of  the  New 
Testament  writings  I  shall  speak  in  the  chapter 
upon  the  canon. 

I  said  at  the  beginning  that  these  writers  prob- 
ably had  no  thought  when  they  composed  these 
letters  that  they  were  contributing  to  a  volume 
that  would  outlast  empires,  and  be  a  manual  of 
study  and  a  guide  of  conduct  in  lands  to  the 
world  then  unknown,  and  in  generations  farther 
from  them  than  they  were  from  Abraham.  But 
each  of  them  uttered  in  sincerity  the  word  that 
to  him  seemed  the  word  of  the  hour  ;  and  God 
who  gives  life  to  the  seed  gave  vitality  to  these 
true  words,  so  that  they  are  as  full  of  divine  en- 
ergy to-day  as  ever  they  were.  It  is  easy  to  cavil 
at  a  sentence  here  and  there,  or  to  pick  flaws 


236  WHO    WROTE    THE  BIBLE? 

in  their  logic  ;  but  the  question  always  returns, 
What  kind  of  fruit  have  they  borne  ?  "  By  their 
fruits  ye  shall  know  them."  One  of  the  most 
precious  gifts  of  God  to  men  is  contained  in  these 
twenty-one  brief  letters.  It  is  not  in  equal  meas- 
ure in  all  of  them,  but  there  is  none  among  them 
that  does  not  contain  some  portion  of  it.  The 
treasure  is  in  earthen  vessels  ;  it  was  so  when 
the  apostles  were  alive  and  speaking  ;  it  is  so 
now  ;  it  always  was  and  always  will  be  so  ;  but 
the  treasure  is  there,  and  he  who  with  open  mind 
and  reverent  spirit  seeks  for  it  will  find  it  there, 
and  will  know  that  the  excellency  of  the  power  is 
of  God,  and  not  of  men. 


CHAPTER   IX. 

THE    ORIGIN    OF   THE    GOSPELS. 

We  have  arrived  in  our  study  of  the  Sacred 
Scriptures  at  the  threshold  of  the  most  interest- 
ing and  the  most  momentous  topic  which  is  pre- 
sented to  the  student  of  the  Biblical  literature,  — 
the  question  of  the  origin  of  the  Gospels.  These 
Gospels  contain  the  record  of  the  life  and  the 
death  of  Jesus  Christ,  that  marvelous  Personality 
in  whom  the  histories,  the  prophecies,  the  lit- 
uro:ies  of  the  Old  Testament  are  fulfilled,  and 
from  w^hom  the  growing  light  and  freedom  and 
happiness  of  eighteen  Christian  centuries  are 
seen  to  flow.  Most  certain  it  is  that  the  history 
of  the  most  enlightened  lands  of  earth  during 
these  Christian  centuries  could  not  be  under- 
stood without  constant  reference  to  the  power 
which  came  into  the  world  when  Jesus  Christ 
was  born.  Some  tremendous  social  force  made 
its  appearance  just  then  by  which  the  whole  life 
of  mankind  has  been  affected  ever  since  that  day. 
The  most  powerful  institutions,  the  most  benign 
influences  which  are  at  work  in  the  world  to-day, 
can  be  followed  back  to  that  period  as  surely  as 
any  great  river  can  be  followed  up  to  the  springs 


238  WHO    WROTE    THE  BIBLE? 

from  which  it  takes  its  rise.  If  we  had  not  these 
four  Gospels  we  should  be  compelled  to  seek  for 
an  explanation  of  the  chief  phenomena  of  modern 
history.  "  We  trace,"  says  Mr.  Horton,  "  this 
astonishing  influence  back  to  that  life,  and  if  we 
knew  nothing  at  all  about  it,  but  had  to  construct 
it  out  of  the  creative  imagination,  we  should  have 
to  figure  to  ourselves  facts,  sayings,  and  impres- 
sions which  would  account  for  what  has  flowed 
from  it.  Thus,  if  the  place  where  this  biography 
comes  were  actually  a  blank,  we  should  be  able 
to  surmise  something  of  what  ought  to  be  there, 
just  as  astronomers  surmised  the  existence  of  a 
new  planet,  and  knew  in  what  quarter  of  the 
heavens  to  look  for  it  by  observing  and  register- 
ing the  influences  which  retarded  or  deflected  the 
movements  of  the  other  planets."  ^ 

That  place  is  not  a  blank ;  it  is  filled  with  the 
fourfold  record  of  the  Life  from  which  all  these 
mighty  influences  have  flowed.  Must  not  this 
record  prove  to  be  the  most  inspiring  theme  open 
to  human  investigation  t  Is  it  any  wonder  that 
more  study  has  been  expended  upon  this  theme 
than  upon  any  other  which  has  ever  claimed  the 
attention  of  men  t 

What  do  we  know  of  the  origin  of  this  four- 
fold record  }  Origin  it  must  have  had  like  every 
other  book,  an  origin  in  time  and  space.  That 
there  are  divine  elements  in  it  the  most  of  us 
believe ;  but  the  form  in  which  we  have  it  is  a 

^  Inspiration  and  the  Bible,  p.  65. 


THE   ORIGIN  OF  THE   GOSPELS.  239 

purely  human  form,  and  it  would  be  worthless  to 
us  if  it  were  not  in  purely  human  form.  The  sen- 
tences of  which  it  is  composed  were  constructed 
.  by  human  minds,  and  were  written  down  by 
human  hands  on  parchment  or  papyrus  leaves. 
When,  and  where,  and  by  whom  ?  These  are  the 
questions  now  before  us. 

Let  us  go  back  to  the  last  half  of  the  second 
century  and  see  what  traces  of  these  books  we 
can  find. 

Irenaeus,  Bishop  of  Lyons,  in  France,  who  died 
about  200,  speaks  distinctly  of  these  four  Gospels, 
which,  he  declares,  are  equal  in  authority  to  the 
Old  Testament  Scriptures,  and  which  he  ascribes 
to  the  four  authors  whose  names  they  now  bear. 
With  the  fanciful  reasoning  then  common  among 
Christian  writers,  he  finds  a  reason  in  the  four 
quarters  of  the  globe  why  there  should  have  been 
four  Gospels  and  no  more. 

Clement  of  Alexandria  was  living  at  the  same 
time.  He  also  quotes  liberally  in  his  writings 
from  all  these  four  books,  of  which  he  speaks  as 
**the  four  Gospels  that  have  been  handed  down 
to  us." 

Tertullian,  who  was  born  in  Carthage  about 
160,  also  quotes  all  these  Gospels  as  authoritative 
Christian  writings. 

It  is  clear,  therefore,  that  in  the  West,  the  East, 
and  the  South,  — in  all  quarters  where  Chris- 
tianity was  then  established,  —  the  four  Gospels 
were  recognized  and  read  in  the  churches  in  the 


240  WHO    WROTE    THE  BIBLE? 

latter  half  of  the  second  century.    Let  us  go  back 
a  little  farther. 

Justin  Martyr  was  born  at  Rome  about  the 
year  lOO,  and  was  writing  most  abundantly  from- 
his  fortieth  to  his  forty-fifth  year.  In  one  of  the 
books  which  he  has  left  us,  in  describing  the 
customs  of  the  Christians,  he  uses  the  following 
language :  "  On  the  day  which  is  called  Sun- 
day there  is  an  assembly  in  the  same  place  of  all 
who  live  in  cities  or  in  country  districts,  and  the 
records  of  the  apostles  or  the  writings  of  the 
prophets  are  read  as  long  as  we  have  time.  Then 
the  reader  concludes,  and  the  president  verbally 
instructs  and  exhorts  us  to  the  imitation  of  these 
excellent  things.  Then  we  all  rise  up  together 
and  offer  our  prayers."  In  another  place  he 
speaks  of  something  commanded  by  "  the  apos- 
tles in  the  records  which  they  made,  and  which 
are  called  Gospels."  Justin  docs  not  say  how 
many  of  these  Gospels  the  church  in  his  day  pos- 
sessed, but  we  find  in  his  writings  unmistakable 
quotations  from  at  least  three  of  them.  Dr.  Ed- 
win Abbott,  of  London,  whom  Mrs.  Humphry 
Ward  refers  to  as  master  of  all  the  German 
learning  on  this  subject,  says  that  it  would  be 
possible  "  to  reconstruct  from  his  (Justin's)  quo- 
tations a  fairly  connected  narrative  of  the  incar- 
nation, birth,  teaching,  crucifixion,  resurrection, 
and  ascension  of  the  Lord;"  that  this  narrative 
is  all  found  in  the  three  Synoptic  Gospels,  and 
that  Justin  quotes  no  words  of  Christ  and  refers 


THE   ORIGIN  OF   THE   GOSPELS.  24 1 

to  no  incidents  that  are  not  found  in  these  Gos- 
pels.^ 

We  may  fully  accept  Dr.  Abbott's  testimony 
so  far  as  the  quotations  of  Justin  from  the  first 
three  Gospels  are  concerned  ;  but  his  arguments,  ' 
which  are  intended  to  prove  that  there  is  no  cer- 
tain reference  to  the  fourth  Gospel  in  Justin's 
works,  appear  to  me  inconclusive.  When  Justin 
says:  "For  indeed  Christ  also  said,  'except  ye 
be  born  again,  ye  shall  not  enter  into  the  king- 
dom of  heaven/  but  that  it  is  impossible  for  those 
who  were  once  born  to  enter  into  their  mother's 
womb  is  plain  to  all,"  he  is  quoting  words  that 
are  found  in  the  fourth  Gospel,  and  not  in  any  of 
the  other  three.  The  attempt  to  show  that  he 
found  these  and  similar  citations  in  the  same 
sources  from  which  the  author  of  the  fourth  Gos- 
pel derived  them  is  not  successful. 

Several  indirect  lines  of  evidence  tend  to  con- 
firm the  belief  that  Justin  possessed  all  four  of 
our  Gospels.  This,  then,  carries  us  back  to  the 
first  half  of  the  second  century.  Between  100 
and  150  Papiaji^jofJFiierapolis,  Clement  of  Rome, 
and  Polycarp  of  Smyrna  were  writing.  Papias, 
who  wrote  about  130-140  a.  d.,  composed  five  l 
books  or  commentaries  on  what  he  calls  "The 
Oracles  of  the  Lord."  He  gives  us  some  account 
of  the  origin  of  at  least  two  of  these  Gospels. 
"  Mark,"  he  says,  "  was  the  interpreter  of  Peter  ;  '*  /}n 
"  Matthew  wrote  his  scriptures  {logia)  in  Hebrew, 

^  Encyc.  Brit.,  vol.  x.  p.  817. 


242  WHO    WROTE    THE  BIBLE  ? 

and  each  man  interpreted  them  as  best  he  could." 
"  Interpreted  "  here  evidently  means  translated. 
Elsewhere  he  repeats  a  tradition  of  "  the  elder," 
by  which  word  he  apparently  means  the  Apostle 
John,  whom  he  may  have  known,  in  these  words : 
"  Mark,  having  become  Peter's  interpreter,  wrote 
down  accurately  all  that  he  remembered,  —  not, 
however,  in  order,  —  both  the  words  and  the 
deeds  of  Christ.  For  he  never  heard  the  Lord? 
nor  attached  himself  to  him,  but  later  on,  as  I 
said,  attached  himself  to  Peter,  who  used  to  adapt 
his  lessons  to  the  needs  of  the  occasion,  but  not 
as  though  he  was  composing  a  connected  treatise 
of  the  discourses  of  our  Lord  ;  so  that  Mark  com- 
mitted no  error  in  writing  down  some  matters 
just  as  he  remembered  them.  For  one  object 
was  in  his  thoughts,  to  make  no  omissions  and 
no  false  statements  in  what  he  heard."  ^  This  is  a 
perfect  description  of  the  Gospel  of  Mark  as  we 
have  it  in  our  hands  to-day.  And  the  testimony 
of  Papias  to  its  authorship,  and  to  the  spirit  and 
purpose  of  the  author,  is  significant  and  memora- 
ble Evidence  of  this  nature  would  be  regarded 
as  decisive  in  any  other  case  of  literary  criticism. 
Polycarp,  who  was  the  friend  and  pupil  of  John 
the  Apostle,  was  born  about  the  year  69,  and  suf- 
fered martyrdom  about  155.  In  his  writings  we 
find  no  express  mention  of  the  Gospels,  but  we 
do  find  verbally  accurate  quotations  from  them. 
It  is  clear  that  he  was  acquainted  with  the  books. 

^  Quoted  by  Abbott,  as  above. 


THE   ORIGIN  OF   THE  GOSPELS.  243 

Polycarp  was  the  teacher  of  Irenxus  of  Lyons 
whom  I  first  quoted,  and  he  was  the  pupil  and 
friend  of  St.  John  and  the  other  apostles ;  and 
Irenaeus,  who  quotes  all  these  Gospels  so  freely, 
bears  this  testimony  respecting  Polycarp,  in  a 
letter  which  he  wrote  to  Floriiuis. 

"  I  saw  you,  when  I  was  yet  a  boy,  in  Lower 
Asia  with  Polycarp.  ...  I  could  even  point  out 
now  the  place  where  the  blessed  Polycarp  sat  and 
spoke,  and  describe  his  going  out  and  coming  in, 
his  manner  of  life,  his  personal  appearance,  the 
addresses  he  delivered  to  the  multitude,  how  he 
spoke  of  his  intercourse  with  John,  and  with  the 
others  who  had  seen  the  Lord,  and  how  he  re- 
called their  words,  and  everything  that  he  had 
heard  about  the  Lord,  about  his  miracles  and  his 
teaching.  Polycarp  told  us,  as  one  who  had  re- 
ceived it  from  those  who  had  seen  the  Word  of 
Life  with  their  own  eyes,  and  all  this  in  complete 
harmony  with  the  Scriptures.  To  this  I  then  lis- 
tened, through  the  mercy  of  God  vouchsafed  to 
me,  with  all  eagerness,  and  wrote  it  not  on  paper, 
but  in  my  heart,  and  still  by  the  grace  of  God  I 
ever  bring  it  into  fresh  remembrance." 

These  living  witnesses  give  us  solid  ground  for 
our  statement  that  the  Gospels  —  the  first  three 
of  them  at  any  rate  —  were  in  existence  during 
the  last  years  of  the  first  century.  Indeed,  not 
to  prolong  this  search  for  the  origin  of  the  books, 
it  is  now  freely  admitted,  by  many  of  the  most 
radical  critics,  that  the  first  three  Gospels  were 


244  ^^^^    WROTE    THE  BIBLE? 

written  before   the  year  80,  and  that  Mark  must 
have  been  written  before  70. 

It  is  interesting  to  contrast  the  course  of  New 
Testament  criticism  with  that  engaged  upon  the 
Old  Testament.  In  the  study  of  the  origin  of 
the  Pentateuch  the  gravitation  of  opinion  has 
been  steadily  downward,  toward  a  later  date,  so 
that  the  great  majority  of  scholars  are  now  cer- 
tain that  the  books  must  have  been  put  into  their 
present  form  long  after  the  time  of  Moses.  In 
the  study  of  the  origin  of  the  Gospels  the  date 
has  been  steadily  pushed  upward,  to  the  very  age 
of  the  apostles.  The  earlier  critics,  Strauss  and 
Baur,  insisted  that  they  must  have  appeared 
much  later,  far  on  in  the  second  century  ;  but  the 
more  recent  and  more  scientific  criticism  has  de- 
molished or  badly  discredited  their  theories,  and 
has  carried  the  Gospels  back  to  the  last  part  of 
the  first  century. 

Are  we  entitled,  then,  to  say  that  these  Gospels 
were  written  by  Matthew,  Mark,  Luke,  and  John  f 
/  We  should  be  cautious,  no  doubt,  in  making  such 
a  statement.  The  Gospels  them.selves  are  not  so 
explicit  on  this  point  as  \ve  could  desire.  Their 
titles  do  not  warrant  this  assertion.  It  is  not 
''The  Gospel  of  St.  Matthew"  or  "The  Gospel 
of  St.  Mark  ;  "  it  is  the  ''Gospel  according  to  St. 
Matthew  "  or  St.  Mark.  The  import  of  the  title 
would  be  fully  satisfied  with  the  explanation  that 
this  is  the  story  as  Matthew  or  Mark  was  wont  to 
tell  it,  put  into  form  by  some  person  or  friend  of 


THE   ORIGLY  OF  THE   GOSPELS.  245 

his,  in  his  last  days,  or  even  after  his  death.  But 
the  testimony  of  Papias,  to  which  I  have  referred, 
is  to  my  own  mind  good  evidence  that  these  Gos- 
pels were  written  by  the  men  who  bear  their 
names.  In  the  case  of  Luke,  as  we  shall  pres- 
ently see,  the  evidence  is  much  stronger.  And 
after  going  over  the  evidence  as  carefully  as  I  am 
able,  the  theory  that  the  four  Gospels  were  writ- 
ten by  the  men  whose  names  they  bear,  all  of 
whom  were  the  contemporaries  of  our  Lord,  and 
two  of  whom  were  his  apostles,  seems  to  me,  on 
the  whole,  the  best  supported  by  the  whole  vol- 
ume of  evidence.  The  case  is  not  absolutely 
clear ;  perhaps  it  was  left  somewhat  obscure  for 
the  very  purpose  of  stimulating  study.  At  all 
events,  the  study  which  has  been  given  to  the 
subject  has  confirmed  rather  than  weakened  the 
belief  that  the  Gospels  are  contemporary  records 
of  the  life  of  Christ.  Mr.  Norton,  a  distinguished 
Unitarian  scholar,  sums  up  the  evidence  as  fol- 
lows :  **  It  consists  in  the  indisputable  fact  that 
throughout  a  community  of  millions  of  individ- 
uals, scattered  over  Europe,  Asia,  and  Africa,  the 
Gospels  were  regarded  with  the  highest  rever- 
ence, as  the  works  of  those  to  whom  they  are 
ascribed,  at  so  early  a  period  that  there  could  be 
no  difficulty  in  determining  whether  they  were 
genuine  or  not,  and  when  every  intelligent  Chris- 
tian must  have  been  deeply  interested  to  ascer- 
tain the  truth.  .  .  .  This  fact  is  itself  a  phe- 
nomenon admitting  of  no  explanation  except  that 


246  WHO    WROTE    THE  BIBLE? 

the  four  Gospels  had  all  been  handed  down  as 
genuine  from  the  apostolic  age,  and  had  every- 
where accompanied  our  religion  as  it  spread 
throughout  the  world." 

When  we  turn  from  the  external  or  historical 
evidence  for  the  genuineness  of  the  Gospels  to 
study  their  internal  structure  and  their  relations 
to  one  another,  we  come  upon  some  curious  facts. 
These  Gospels,  in  the  form  in  which  we  possess 
them,  are  written  in  the  Greek  language.  But 
the  Greek  language  was  not  the  vernacular  of  the 
Jews  in  Palestine  when  our  Lord  was  on  the 
earth  ;  the  language  which  was  then  spoken  by 
them,  as  I  have  before  explained,  was  the  Ara- 
maic. It  is  true  that  Palestine  was,  to  some  ex- 
tent, a  bilingual  country,  —  like  Wales,  one  writer 
suggests,  where  the  English  and  the  Welsh  lan- 
guages are  now  freely  spoken,  —  that  Aramaic 
and  Greek  were  used  indifferently.  I  can  hardly 
imagine  that  a  people  as  tenacious  of  their  own 
institutions  as  the  Jews  could  have  adopted 
Greek  as  generally  as  the  Welsh  have  adopted 
the  English  tongue.  Even  in  Wales,  if  a  Welsh- 
man were  speaking  to  a  congregation  of  his  coun- 
trymen on  any  important  topic,  he  would  be 
likely  to  speak  the  Welsh  language.  And  much 
more  probable  does  it  seem  to  me  that  the  dis- 
courses and  the  common  conversation  of  Jesus 
must  have  been  spoken  in  the  vernacular.  The 
discourses  and  sayings  of  our  Lord,  as  reported 
for  us  in  these  Gospels,  are  not  therefore  given 


THE   ORIGIN  OF   THE   GOSPELS.  247 

US  in  the  words  that  he  used.     We  have  a  trans- 
lation of  his  words  from   the  Aramaic  into  the 
Greek,  made  either  by  the  writers  of  the  Gospels, 
or  by  some  one  in  their  day.     We  have  quoted 
the  testimony  of  Papias,  that  the  Gospel  of  Mat- 
thew was  originally  written  in  Hebrew  (by  which 
he   undoubtedly  means  Aramaic),  and  that  each 
one  interpreted  it  as  best  he  could  ;  and  if  this 
be  true,  then   that   copy  first  made  by  Matthew 
did  contain  many  of  our  Lord's  very  words.     But 
that    Aramaic  copy  has  never  been  seen   since 
that  day  ;  we  have  no   manuscript  of  any  New 
Testament  book  except  in  the  Greek  language. 
There  are  a  few  cases  in  which  the  writers  of  the 
Gospels  have   preserved  for  us  the  very  words 
used  by  Christ.     Thus  in  the  healing  of  the  deaf 
man  in  the  neighborhood  of  Decapolis,  of  which 
Mark  tells  us  (vii.  34),  Jesus  touched  his  ears,  and 
said  unto  him,  ''Ephphatha,"  that  is,  "Be  opened." 
The  Evangelist  gives  us  the  Aramaic  word  which 
Jesus  used,  and  translates  it  for  his  readers  into 
Greek.     Likewise  in  the  healing  of  the  ruler's 
daughter  (Mark  v.  41)  he  took  her  by  the  hand, 
and  said  unto  her,  "  Talitha  cumi,  which  is,  being 
interpreted,"  the  Evangelist  explains,  "  Damsel, 
I  say  unto  thee,  Arise."     Doubtless  most  readers 
get  the  impression  that  our  Lord  used  here  some 
cabalistic  words  in  a  foreign  tongue ;  the  fact  is 
that  these  are  the  words  of  the  common  speech 
of  the  people  ;  only  the  Evangelist  seems  to  have 
thought  them  especially  memorable,  and  he  has 


248  WHO    WROTE    THE  BIBLE? 

given  us  not  merely,  as  he  generally  does,  a  trans- 
lation into  the  Greek  of  our  Lord's  words,  but  the 
Aramaic  words  themselves,  with  their  meaning 
appended  in  a  Greek  phrase.  The  same  is  true 
of  our  Lord's  words  on  the  cross  :  "  Eli,  Kli, 
lama  sabachthani  ?"  These  are  Aramaic  words, 
the  very  words  that  Jesus  uttered.  The  Roman 
soldiers  who  stood  near  might  not  know  what  he 
meant  ;  but  every  Jew  who  distinctly  heard  him 
must  have  understood  him,  for  he  was  speaking 
in  no  foreign  tongue,  but  in  the  language  of  his 
own  people. 

When  we  speak,  therefore,  of  the  Greek  as  the 
original  language  of  the  Gospels,  we  do  not 
speak  with  entire  accuracy.  The  Greek  does  not 
give  us  our  Lord's  original  words.  These  we 
have  not,  except  in  the  cases  I  have  named,  and 
a  few  others  less  important.  No  man  on  earth 
knows  or  ever  will  know  what  were  the  precise 
words  that  our  Lord  used  in  his  Sermon  on  the 
jMount,  in  his  conversation  with  the  woman  at 
the  well,  in  his  last  discourses  with  his  disciples. 
We  have  every  reason  to  believe  that  the  sub- 
stance of  what  he  said  is  faithfully  preserved  for 
us  ;  the  fourfold  record,  so  marvelously  accord- 
ant in  its  report  of  his  teachings,  makes  this  per- 
fectly clear.  But  his  very  words  we  have  not, 
and  this  fact  itself  is  the  most  convincing  dis- 
proof of  the  dogma  of  verbal  inspiration.  If  our 
Lord  had  thought  it  important  that  we  should 
have  his  very  words  he  would  have  seen  to  it  that 


THE   ORIGIN  OF   THE   GOSPELS.  249 

his  very  words  were  preserved  and  recorded  for 
us,  instead  of  that  Greek  translation  of  his  words, 
made  by  his  followers,  which  we  now  possess. 
These  evangelists  could  have  written  Aramaic, 
doubtless  did  write  Aramaic;  and  they  would 
certainly  have  kept  our  Lord's  discourses  and 
sayings  in  the  Aramaic  original  if  they  had  been 
instructed  to  do  so.  The  fact  that  they  were  not 
instructed  to  do  so,  but  were  permitted  to  give 
his  teachings  to  the  world  in  other  words  than 
those  in  which  they  were  spoken,  shows  how  lit- 
tle there  was  of  modern  literalism  in  Christ's  con- 
ception of  the  work  of  revelation.  

The  first  three  of  these  Gospels  exhibit  many 
striking  similarities ;  they  appear  to  give,  from 
somewhat  different  standpoints,  a  condensed  and 
complete  synopsis  of  the  events  of  our  Lord's  life  ; 
therefore  they  are  called  the  Synoptic  Gospels. 
The  fourth  Gospel  differs  widely  from  them  in 
matter  and  form.  It  will  be  more  convenient, 
therefore,  to  speak  first  of  the  Synoptic  Gospels, 
Matthew,  Mark,  and  Luke. 

The  singular  fact  respecting  these  Gospels  is 
the  combination  in  them  of  likeness  and  differ- 
ence. A  considerable  portion  of  each  one  of 
them  is  to  be  found,  word  for  word,  in  one  or 
both  of  the  others  ;  other  considerable  portions 
of  each  are  not  found  in  either  of  the  others  ; 
some  passages  are  nearly  alike,  but  slightly  differ- 
ent in  two  or  in  all  of  them.  Did  these  three  au- 
thors write  independently  each  of  the  other .?     If 


/ 


250  WHO  WROTE    THE  BIBLE? 

SO,  how  docs  it  happen  that  their  phraseology  is 
so  often  identical  ?  Did  they  copy  one  from  an- 
other ?  If  so,  why  did  they  copy  so  little  ?  Why, 
for  example,  did  each  one  of  them  omi-t  so  much 
that  the  others  had  written  ?  And  why  are  there 
so  many  slight  differences  in  passages  that  are 
nearly  identical  ?  If  we  accepted  the  theory  of 
verbal  inspiration,  we  might  offer  some  sort  of 
explanation  of  this  phenomenon.  We  might  say 
that  the  Holy  Ghost  dictated  these  words,  and 
that  that  is  the  end  of  it ;  since  no  explanation 
can  be  offered  of  the  reason  why  the  Holy  Ghost 
chose  one  form  of  expression  rather  than  an- 
other. But  the  Gospels  themselves  contain 
abundant  proof  that  the  Holy  Ghost  did  not  dic- 
tate the  words  employed  by  these  writers. 

The  two  genealogies  of  our  Lord,  one  in  Mat- 
thew and  the  other  in  Luke,  are  widely  different. 
From  Abraham  to  David  they  substantially 
agree  ;  from  David  to  Christ,  Matthew  makes 
twenty-eight  generations,  and  Luke  thirty-eight  ; 
only  two  of  the  intermediate  names  in  the  one 
table  are  found  in  the  other ;  the  one  list  makes 
Jacob  the  father  of  Joseph,  and  the  other  declares 
that  the  name  of  Joseph's  father  was  Heli.  All 
sorts  of  explanations,  some  plausible  and  others 
preposterous,  have  been  offered  of  this  difficulty; 
the  one  explanation  that  cannot  be  allowed  is 
that  these  words  were  dictated  by  Omniscience. 

In  the  story  of  the  healing  of  the  blind  near 
Jericho,  Matthew  and  Mark  expressly  say  that 


THE   ORIGIN  OF   THE  GOSPELS.  25 1 

the  healing  took  place  as  Christ  was  departing 
from  the  city  ;  Luke  that  it  was  before  he  en- 
tered it.  Matthew  says  that  there  were  two 
blind  men  ;  Mark  and  Luke  that  there  was  but 
one.  About  these  details  of  the  transaction  there 
is  some  mistake,  —  that  is  the  only  thing  to  be 
said  about  it.  The  various  explanations  offered 
are  weak  and  inadmissible.  But  what  difference 
docs  it  make  to  anybody  whether  the  healing 
took  place  before  or  after  Jesus  entered  the  city, 
or  whether  there  was  one  man  healed  or  two.? 
The  moral  and  spiritual  lessons  of  the  story  are 
just  as  distinct  in  the  one  case  as  in  the  other ; 
and  it  is  these  moral  and  spiritual  values  only 
that  inspiration  is  intended  to  secure. 

Similarly,  Luke  (iv.  38-39)  expressly  tells  us 
that  the  healing  of  Peter's  wife's  mother  took 
place  before  the  calling  of  Simon  and  Andrew ; 
while  Matthew  and  Mark  tell  us  with  equal  ex- 
plicitness  that  the  calling  took  place  before  the 
healing.  No  reconciliation  is  possible  here ; 
either  Luke  or  Matthew  and  Mark  must  have 
misplaced  these  events. 

So  in  Matthew  xxvii.  9,  certain  words  are  said 
to  have  been  spoken  by  Jeremiah  the  prophet. 
These  words  are  not  in  Jeremiah  ;  they  are  in 
Zcchariah  xi.  13.  It  is  simply  a  slip  of  the 
Evangelist's  memory. 

So  in  the  record  of  the  inscription  on  the  cross 
when  Jesus  was  crucified.  Each  of  the  four 
Ev^angelists  copies  it  for  us  in  a  different  form. 


252  WHO    WROTE    THE  BIBLE? 

The  meaning  is  the  same  in  all  the  cases,  but  the 
copy  was  not  exactly  made  by  some  of  them,  per- 
haps not  by  any  of  them.  If  the  Holy  Ghost 
had  dictated  the  words,  they  must,  in  a  case  like 
this,  have  been  exactly  alike  in  all  the  Evangel- 
ists. The  substance  is  given,  but  the  inexactness 
of  the  copy  shows  that  the  words  could  not  have 
been  dictated  by  Omniscience.  It  is  sometimes 
explained  that  this  inscription  was  in  three  lan- 
guages, Greek,  Latin,  and  Hebrew,  and  that  we 
may  have  the  exact  translations  of  the  different 
inscriptions.  This  might  account  for  three  of 
them,  but  not  for  four. 

From  these  and  many  other  similar  facts,  we 
know  that  the  theory  of  verbal  inspiration  is  not 
true  ;  but  that  these  Evangelists  were  allowed  to 
.state  each  in  his  own  language  the  facts  known 
ty  him  concerning  our  Lord,  and  that  nothing 
I^ke  infallible  accuracy  was  so  much  as  attempted. 
The  only  inspiration  that  can  be  claimed  for 
them  is  that  which  brought  the  important  facts 
to  their  remembrance,  and  guarded  them  against 
serious  errors  of  history  or  doctrine. 

But  now  the  question  returns,  if  they  wrote 
these  Gospels  in  their  own  language  and  inde- 
pendently of  one  another,  how  happens  it  that 
they  use  so  often  the  very  same  words  and 
phrases  and  sentences }  Take,  for  example,  the 
following  verses  from  parallel  narratives  in  Mat- 
thew and  in  Mark,  concerning  the  calling  of  the 
first  apostles :  — 


THE   ORIGIN  OF   THE   GOSPELS. 


253 


Matthkw  iv.  18-22. 

And  walking  by  the  sea  of 
Galilee,  he  saw  two  brethren, 
Simon  who  is  called  Peter, 
and  Andrew  his  brother,  cast- 
ing a  net  into  the  sea;  for 
they  were  fishers.  And  he 
saith  unto  them,  Come  ye 
after  me,  and  I  will  make  you 
fishers  of  men.  And  they 
straightway  left  the  nets,  and 
followed  him.  And  going 
on  from  thence  he  saw  two 
other  brethren,  James  the 
son  of  Zebedee,  and  John  his 
brother,  in  the  boat  with 
Zebedee  their  father,  mend- 
ing their  nets  ;  and  he  called 
them.  And  they  straight- 
way left  the  boat  and  their 
father,  and  followed  him. 


Mahk  i.  16-20. 

And  passing  along  Ly  the 
sea  of  Galilee,  he  saw  Simon 
and  Andrew  the  brother  of 
Simon  casting  a  net  in  the 
sea:  for  they  were  fishers. 
And  Jesus  said  unto  them, 
Come  ye  after  me,  and  I  will 
make  you  to  become  fishers 
of  men.  And  straightway 
they  left  the  nets,  and  fol- 
lowed him.  And  going  on  a 
little  further,  he  saw  James 
the  son  of  Zebedee,  and  John 
his  brother,  who  also  were 
in  the  boat  mending  the 
nets.  And  straightway  he 
called  them  :  and  they  left 
their  father  Zebedee  in  the 
boat  with  the  hired  servants, 
and  went  after  him. 


There  are  slight  verbal  variations,  but  in  general 
the  words  are  the  same,  and  the  corresponding 
sentences  are  in  precisely  the  same  order  in  both 
narratives.  Now,  as  Archbishop  Thomson  says, 
in  Smith's  "Bible  Dictionary,"  "The  verbal  and 
material  agreement  of  the  first  three  Evangel- 
ists is  such  as  does  not  occur  in  any  other  au- 
thors who  have  written  independently  of  each 
other." 

Besides  many  such  passages  which  are  sub- 
stantially alike  but  verbally  or  syntactically  dif- 
ferent, there  are  quite  a  number  which  are  iden- 


254  ^^^^    WROTE    THE  BIBLE? 

tical,  word  for  word,  and  phrase  for  phrase. 
These  verbal  agreements  occur  most  frequently, 
as  is  natural,  in  the  reports  of  our  Lord's  dis- 
courses and  sayings  ;  but  they  also  occur  in  the 
descriptive  and  narrative  portions  of  the  gospel. 
This  is  the  fact  which  is  so  difficult  to  reconcile 
with  the  theory  that  the  books  were  produced  by 
independent  writers. 

Suppose  three  competent  and  truthful  reporters 
are  employed  by  you  to  write  an  exact  and  un- 
varnished report  of  some  single  transaction 
which  has  occurred,  and  which  each  of  them  has 
witnessed.  Each  is  required  to  do  his  work  with- 
out any  conference  with  the  others.  When 
these  reports  are  brought  to  you,  if  they  are  very 
faithful  and  accurate  for  substance,  you  will  not 
be  surprised  to  find  some  circumstances  men- 
tioned by  each  that  are  not  mentioned  by  either 
of  the  others,  and  it  will  be  strange  if  there  are 
not  some  important  discrepancies.  But  if  on 
reading  them,  you  find  that  the  reports,  taken 
sentence  by  sentence,  are  almost  identical,  —  that 
there  is  only  an  occasional  difference  in  a  word 
or  in  the  order  of  a  phrase, -- then  you  at  once 
say,  "  These  reporters  must  have  been  copying 
from  some  other  reporter's  note-book,  or  else 
they  must  have  been  comparing  notes ;  they 
could  not  have  written  with  such  verbal  agree- 
ment if  they  had  written  independently."  Sup- 
pose, for  example,  that  each  of  the  three  reports 
began    in   just    these  words  :    "  The  first  object 


THE   ORIGIN  OF   THE   GOSPELS.  255 

that  attracted  my  notice  on  entering  the  door 
was  a  chair."  Now  it  is  extremely  improbable 
that  all  these  writers,  writing  independent  re- 
ports of  a  transaction,  should  begin  in  the  same 
way  by  mentioning  the  first  object  that  attracted 
the  attention  of  each.  And  even  if  they  should 
so  begin,  it  is  wholly  beyond  the  range  of  possi- 
bilities that  they  should  all  select  from  all  the 
multitude  of  the  words  in  the  English  language 
the  very  same  words  in  which  to  make  this  state- 
ment ;  and  should  put  these  words  in  the  very 
same  order,  out  of  the  multitude  of  different  or- 
ders into  which  they  could  grammatically  be  put. 
There  is  not  one  chance  in  a  million  that  such  a 
coincidence  would  occur.  But  such  coincidences 
occur  very  often  in  the  first  three  Gospels.  How 
can  we  account  for  it }  We  say  that  they  wrote 
independently,  that  their  words  were  not  dic- 
tated to  them  ;  how  does  it  happen  that  there  is 
so  much  verbal  agreement  t 

We  may  get  some  hint  of  the  manner  in  which 
these  biographies  were  produced  if  we  turn  to 
the  beginning  of  Luke's  Gospel  :  — 

"Forasmuch  as  many  have  taken  in  hand  to 
draw  up  a  narrative  concerning  those  matters 
which  have  been  fulfilled  among  us,  even  as  they 
delivered  them  unto  us,  which  from  the  beginning 
were  eyewitnesses  and  ministers  of  the  word,  it 
seemed  good  to  me  also,  having  traced  the  course 
of  all  things  accurately  from  the  first,  to  write 
unto  thee   in   order,  most  excellent  Theophilus ; 


256  WHO    WROTE    THE  BIBLE? 

that  thou  mightest  know  the  certainty  concern- 
ing the  things  wherein  thou  wast  instructed." 
The  marginal  reading  of  this  last  phrase  is, 
"which  thou  wast  taught  by  word  of  mouth." 
This  is  the  more  exact  meaning  of  the  Greek. 
The  passage  contains  these  statements  :  — 

1.  Theophilus  had  been  orally  taught  the  Gos- 
pels. 

2.  Many  persons,  not  apostles,  had  undertaken 
to  write  out  parts  of  the  gospel  story,  as  they 
had  heard  it  from  eyewitnesses  and  ministers  of 
the  word. 

3.  Luke  also,  as  one  who  had  full  and  accu- 
rate information,  had  determined  to  reduce  his 
knowledge  to  an  orderly  written  narrative,  for 
the  benefit  of  his  friend  Theophilus. 

It  appears  from  this  clear  statement  that  writ- 
ten memoranda  of  the  discourses  of  our  Lord  and 
of  the  incidents  of  his  life  had  been  made  by 
many  persons.  Numbers  of  these  had  under- 
taken to  combine  their  memoranda  with  their 
recollections  in  an  orderly  statement.  This  fact 
itself  shows  how  powerful  an  impression  had 
been  made  by  our  Lord's  life  and  death  upon  the 
people  of  Palestine.  Everything  relating  to  him 
was  treasured  with  the  utmost  care  ;  Luke,  for 
his  part,  believing  that  he  had  gained  by  careful 
investigation  sufficient  knowledge  to  warrant  the 
undertaking,  sets  out  to  collect  the  facts  and  pre- 
sent them  in  a  consecutive  and  intelligible  liter- 
ary form.     Yet  Luke,  in  this  announcement  of 


THE   ORIGIN  OF   THE   GOSPELS.  257 

his  purpose,  betrays  no  consciousness  that  he  is 
using  any  different  powers  from  those  employed 
by  the  many  others  of  whom  he  speaks.  Rather  A^ 
does  he  most  clearly  rank  himself  with  them,  as 
one  of  many  gleaners  in  this  fruitful  field.  He* 
does  claim  thoroughness  and  painstaking  accu- 
racy ;  I  believe  that  every  honest  man  will  con- 
cede his  claim. 

This,  then,  was  the  way  in  which  Luke  went 
to  work  to  write  his  Gospel.  This  is  not  guess- 
work ;  it  is  the  explicit  statement  of  the  author 
himself.  Have  we  not  good  reason  for  believing 
that  the  Gospels  of  Matthew  and  Mark  were  com- 
posed in  much  the  same  way  .<* 

In    addition    to    the    written     memoranda   of     ' 
Christ's  life  which  were  in  the  hands  of  the  apos- 
tles,  and    of   many    others,    there   was    another 
source  from  which   the   Evangelists   must   have 
drawn.     Luke  alludes  to  it   when  he   speaks  of 
the  fact  that  Theophilus  had  received  much  of  his 
narrative  "by  word  of  mouth."     There  was,  un-  / 
questionably,  an  oral  gospel,  covering  the  larger  < , 
part  of  the  deeds  and  the  words  of  Jesus,  which  1. 
had  been  widely  circulated  in  Palestine    and  in 
the   whole    missionary   field.     When    it    is   said 
(Acts    viii.    1-4  ;    xi.   19)  that  they  which  were 
scattered  abroad  by  the  early  pers-ecutions  went 
everywhere  preaching  the  word,  it  must  be  un- 
derstood that  they  went  about  simply  telling  the 
story  of  Jesus,  his  birth,  his  life,  his  deeds,  his 
words,  his  death    upon    the  cross.     Sometimes, 


258  IVHO    WROTE    THE  BIBLE? 

when  preaching  to  Jews,  they  would  show  the 
correspondence  between  his  life  and  the  Old  Tes- 
tament prophecies,  to  prove  that  he  was  the  Mes- 
siah ;  but  the  substance  of  their  preaching  was 
the  telling  over  and  over  again  of  the  story  of 
Jesus.  It  was  upon  this  oral  gospel  that  the 
apostles  and  the  first  missionaries  mainly  relied. 
What  they  desired  to  do  was  to  make  known  as 
speedily  and  as  rapidly  as  possible  the  words  of 
his  lips  and  the  facts  of  his  life.  And  it  is  highly 
probable  that  before  they  set  out  on  these  mis- 
sionary tours,  they  took  great  pains  to  rehearse 
to  one  another  the  story  which  they  were  going 
forth  to  tell.  "  The  apostles,"  says  Professor 
Westcott,  **  guided  by  the  promised  Spirit  of 
truth,  remained  together  in  Jerusalem  in  close 
communion  for  a  period  long  enough  to  shape  a 
common  narrative,  and  to  fix  it  with  requisite 
surroundings." 

It  was  these  concerted  recollections  and  re- 
hearsals that  gave  to  so  many  passages  of  the 
gospel  its  identity  in  form.  Some  of  the  sen- 
tences often  and  devoutly  repeated  were  remem- 
bered by  all,  word  for  word  ;  in  some  of  them 
there  were  verbal  differences  and  discrepancies, 
as  they  were  repeated  by  one  and  another.  The 
verbal  resemblances  as  well  as  the  verbal  differ- 
ences are  thus  explained  by  this  theory  of  an  oral 
gospel,  prepared  at  first  for  preaching  by  the 
apostles,  and  held  only  in  their  memory. 

The  preservation  of  so  many  passages  in  words 


THE   ORIGIN  OF  THE   GOSPELS.  259 

and  sentences  nearly  or  exactly  similar  is  nothing 
miraculous.  Even  in  our  own  time  there  are, 
as  we  are  told,  secret  societies  whose  ritual  has 
never  been  written,  but  has  been  handed  down 
with  nearly  verbal  accuracy,  from  generation  to 
generation.  For  the  Hebrews,  who  were  a  peo- 
ple at  this  time  greatly  disinclined  to  write,  and 
thoroughly  practiced  in  remembering  and  repeat- 
ing the  sayings  of  their  wise  men,  this  task  would 
not  be  difficult. 

The  apostles  and  the  early  evangelists,  as  West- 
cott  suggests,  were  preachers,  not  historians,  not 
pamphleteers.     They  believed  in  living  witnesses 
more  than  in  transmitted,  documents.     They  did 
not  write  out  the  record  at   first,  partly  because 
they   were    naturally   disinclined    to   write,    and  / 
partly,  no  doubt,  because  they  expected  the  im-  ^ 
mediate  return  of  our  Lord  to  earth.     Their  gos- 
pel was  therefore  for  many  years  a  spoken  and  ' 
not  a  written  word.     As  they  went  on  repeating  ■ 
it,  changes  would  occur  in  the  repetition  of  the 
words ;  to  the  remembrance  of  one  and  another 
of  them  the  Spirit  of  truth  would  bring  facts  and 
circumstances  that  they  did  not  think  of  at  first  ; 
words,  phrases,  gestures  of  our  Lord  would  re- 
appear in    the  memory   of   each,   and   thus   the 
narrative  became  varied  and  shaded  with  the  per- 
sonal peculiarities  of  the  several  writers. 

Years  passed,  and  the  expected  return  of  the 
Lord  to  earth  did  not  take  place.  The  churches 
were  spreading  over  Asia  and  Europe,  and  the 


260  WHO    WROTE    THE  BIBLE? 

apostles  were  unable  personally  to  instruct  those 
who  were  preaching  the  gospel  in  other  lands. 
Thus  the  need  of  a  written  record  began  to  make 
itself  felt ;  and  the  apostles  themselves  wrote  out 
the  story  which  they  had  been  telling,  or  it  was 
written  for  them  by  their  companions  and  fellow- 
helpers  in  the  gospel.  The  oral  gospel  as  it  lived 
in  their  memories  would  form,  no  doubt,  the  sub- 
stance of  it,  and  the  written  memoranda  of  the 
discourses  and  incidents,  to  which  Luke  refers, 
would  be  drawn  upon  in  completing  the  biogra- 
phy. The  oral  gospel  thus  carefully  prepared 
and  transmitted  by  memory  would  be  substan- 
tially the  same,  yet  many  differences  in  arrange- 
ment of  words  and  phrases  would  naturally  have 
crept  in  ;  the  written  memoranda  would  in  many 
cases  be  verbally  identical.  And  each  Evangel- 
ist, gleaning  from  this  wide  field,  would  collect 
some  facts  and  sayings  omitted  by  the  others. 

There  are  other  explanations  of  the  origin  of 
the  Synoptic  Gospels,  some  of  which  are  inge- 
nious and  plausible,  but  I  shall  not  burden  your 
minds  with  them,  since  the  theory  which  I  have 
presented  appears  to  me  the  simplest,  the  most 
natural,  and  the  most  comprehensive  of  them  all. 

The  Eourth  Gospel,  it  is  evident,  must  have 
had  a  different  origin.  Beyond  question  it  is 
a  consecutive  narrative,  composed  by  a  single 
writer,  and  not,  like  the  Synoptics,  a  compilation 
of  memoranda,  oral  or  written.  It  appears  to  be, 
in  part  at  least,  a  supplementary  narrative,  omit- 


THE   ORIGIX  OF  THE    GOSPELS.  26 1 

ting  much  that  is  contained  in  the  other  Gospels, 
supplying  some  omissions,  and  correcting,  pos- 
sibly, certain  unimportant  errors.  Mr.  Horton 
illustrates  the  supplementary  work  of  this  Evan- 
gelist by  several  instances.  "  The  communion  of 
the  Lord's  Supper,"  he  says,  "was  so  universally 
known  and  observed  when  he  wrote  that  he  ac- 
tually does  not  mention  its  institution,  but  he 
records  a  wonderful  discourse  concerning  the 
Bread  of  Life  which  is  an  indispensable  com- 
mentary on  the  unnamed  institution,  and  by  fill- 
ing in  with  great  detail  the  circumstances  of  the 
last  evening,  he  furnished  a  framework  for  the 
ordinance  which  is  among  our  most  precious  pos- 
sessions. On  the  other  hand,  because  the  com- 
mon tradition  was  very  vague  in  its  date  he  gave 
precision  to  the  event  which  they  had  recorded 
by  fixing  the  time  of  its  occurrence.  ...  In  Matt, 
iv.  12  and  Mark  i.  14,  the  temptation,  imme- 
diately following  Christ's  baptism,  is  immediately 
followed  by  the  statement,  *  When  he  heard  that 
John  was  delivered  up,  he  withdrew  into  Galilee  ; 
and  leaving  Nazareth  he  came  and  dwelt  in  Ca- 
pernaum.' But  this  summary  narrative  had  ex- 
cluded one  of  the  most  interesting  features  of  the 
early  ministry  of  Jesus.  Accordingly  the  Fourth  \ 
Gospel  enlarges  the  story  and  emphasizes  the 
marks  of  time.  After  the  Baptism,  according  to 
this  authority,  Jesus  *went  down  to  Capernaum, 
he  and  his  mother  and  his  brethren  and  his  dis- 
ciples, and   there   they  abode   not   many  days ' 


262  IV//0    WROTE    THE  BIBLE? 

(ii.  12).  Then  he  went  up  to  the  Passover  at 
Jerusalem,  where  he  had  the  interview  with  Nico- 
demus.  After  that  he  went  into  the  country  dis- 
tricts of  Judea,  where  John  was  baptizing  in  ^non, 
and  then  the  writer  adds,  as  if  his  eye  were  on 
the  condensed  and  misleading  narrative  of  the 
common  tradition,  *  For  John  was  not  yet  cast 
into  prison.'  The  two  great  teachers,  the  Fore- 
runner, and  the  Greater-than-he,  were  actually 
baptizing  side  by  side,  and  it  was  because  Jesus 
saw  his  reputation  overshadowing  John's  that 
he  voluntarily  withdrew  into  Galilee,  passing 
through  Samaria.  So  that  while  there  had  been 
two  journeys  to  Galilee  before  John  was  impris- 
oned, and  that  early  period  of  the  life  was  full  of 
unique  and  wonderful  interest,  all  had  been  com- 
pressed and  crushed  into  the  brief  statement  of 
Matt.  iv.  12  and  Mark  i.  14.  In  this  case  we  seem 
to  see  the  Evangelist  deliberately  loosening  and 
breaking  up  the  current  history  in  order  that  he 
might  insert  into  the  cramped  and  lifeless  frame- 
work some  of  the  most  valuable  episodes  of  the 
Lord's  life.  If  the  fourth  Evangelist  had  treated 
the  triple  narrative  in  the  way  that  many  of  us 
have  treated  it,  regarding  it  as  a  sin  against  the 
Holy  Spirit  to  suggest  that  there  was  any  incom- 
pleteness or  any  misleading  abbreviations  in  it, 
we  should  have  lost  the  wonderful  accounts  of 
the  conversation  with  Nicodemus  and  with  the 
woman  at  the  well."  ^ 

^  Inspiration  and  the  Bible,  pp.  95-99- 


THE    ORIGIN  OF   THE    GOSPELS.  263 

If  suth  is  the  relation  of  the  Fourth  Gospel  to 
the  Synoptics,  it   follows  that  it  must  have  been 
the   work  of   one  who   was    thoroughly  familiar 
with   the   events    recorded.     That   the   narrative 
bears  evidence  of  having  been  written  by  an  eye- 
witness   is    to   my   own    mind    clear.     That    the 
writer  intends  to  convey  the  impression  that  he 
is  the  beloved  disciple  is  also  manifest.     Either  it   f 
was  written  by  John  the  Apostle,  or  else  the  writer    1 
was  a  deliberate  deceiver.    There  can  be  no  such    I 
explanation  of  his   personation  of  John   as  that 
which  satisfies  our  minds  in  the  case  of  Daniel 
and  Ecclesiastes  ;  the  book  is  either  the  work  of 
John,  or  it  is  a  cunning  and  conscienceless  fraud.  If 
And  it  seems  to  me  that  any  one  who  will  read 
the  book  will  find  it  impossible  to  believe  that  it  f|\\ 
is  an  imposture.     If  any  book  of  the  ages  bears    \' 
in  itself  the  witness  to  the  truth  it  is  the  Fourth 
Gospel.     It  shines  by  its  own  light.     Any  of  us 
could  tell  the  difference  between  the  sun  in  the 
heavens  and  a  brass  disk  suspended  in  the  sky 
reflecting  the  sun's  rays  ;  and  in  much  the  same 
way  the  fact  is  apparent  that  the  book  is  not  a 
counterfeit  gospel. 

It  is  true  that  historical  criticism  has  raised 
difficulties  about  it  ;  the  battle  of  the  critics  has 
been  raging  around  it  for  half  a  century  ;  but  one 
after  another  of  the  positions  taken  by  men  like 
Strauss  and  Baur  have  been  shown  to  be  unten- 
able ;  and  it  can  truthfully  be  said,  in  the  words 
of  Professor  Ladd,  "  that  the  vigorous  and  deter- 


264  ^VIIO    WROTE    THE   BIBLE? 

mined  attacks  upon  the  genuineness  of  the  Fourth 
Gospel  have  greatly  increased  instead  of  impair- 
ing our  confidence  in  the  traditional  view."  ^ 
And  I  am  ready  to  go  farther  with  the  same 
brave  but  reverent  scholar,  and  say,  "  Having 
thus  grounded  in  historical  and  critical  researches 
the  genuineness  of  the  Fourth  Gospel,  we  have 
no  hesitation  in  affirming  what  position  it  must 
take  in  Sacred  Scripture.  It  is  the  heart  of  Jesus 
Christ  with  which  we  here  come  in  contact.  In- 
spiration and  reflection  uniting  upon  the  choicest 
and  most  undoubted  material  of  history,  and  fus- 
ing all  the  material  with  the  holy  characteristics 
of  revelation,  are  nowhere  else  so  apparent  as  in 
the  Gospel  of  the  Apostle  John."^ 

Such,  then,  is  the  fourfold  biography  of  Jesus 
the  Christ  preserved  for  us  in  the  New  Testa- 
ment. If  this  study  has  removed  something  of 
the  mystery  with  which  the  origin  of  these  writ- 
ings has  been  shrouded,  it  has,  I  trust,  at  the 
same  time,  made  them  appear  more  real  and  more 
human  ;  and  it  has  shown  the  providential  ovef- 
sight  by  which  their  artless  record,  many-sided, 
manifold,  yet  simple  and  clear  as  the  daylight,  has 
been  preserved  for  us.  Of  these  four  Gospels  we 
are  certainly  entitled  to  say  as  much  as  this,  that 
whatever  verbal  discrepancies  may  be  detected  in 
them,  and  however  difficult  it  may  be  satisfac- 
torily to  explain  all  the  phenomena  of  their  struc- 

1  What  is  the  Bible  ?  p.  327. 

2  Doctrine  of  Sacred  Serif  tii re,  \.  573. 


THE   ORIGIN  OF  THE   GOSPELS.  265 

tiire  and  relations,  in  one  thing  they  marvelously 
agree,  and  that  is  in  the  picture  which  they  give 
us  of  the  Hfe  and  character  of  Jesus  Christ.  In 
this  each  one  of  them  is  self-consistent,  and  they 
are  all  consistent  with  one  another.  And  this,  if 
we  will  reflect  upon  it,  is  a  marvelous,  not  to  say 
a  miraculous  fact.  That  four  such  men  as  these 
Evangelists  incontcstably  were  should  have  suc- 
ceeded in  giving  us  four  portraitures  of  the  Divine 
Man,  without  contradicting  themselves,  and  with- 
out contradicting  one  another,  —  four  distinct 
views  of  this  wonderful  Person,  which  show  us 
different  sides  of  his  character,  and  which  we  yet 
instantly  recognize  as  the  same  person,  is  a  very 
great  wonder.  No  such  task  was  ever  laid  on 
any  other  human  biographer  as  that  which  con- 
fronted these  men  ;  no  character  so  difficult  to 
comprehend  and  describe  ever  existed ;  for  one 
man  to  preserve  all  the  unities  of  art  in  describ- 
ing him  would  be  notable  ;  for  four  men  to  give 
us.  independently,  four  narratives,  from  the  sim- 
ple pages  of  which  the  same  lineaments  shine 
out,  so  that  no  one  ever  thinks  of  saying  that  the 
Jesus  of  Matthew  is  a  different  person  from  the 
Jesus  of  Mark  or  Luke  or  John,  —  this,  I  say,  is 
marvelous. 

And  it  is  this  character,  majestic  in  its  sim- 
plicity, glorious  in  its  humility,  the  Ideal  of  Hu- 
manity, the  Mystery  of  Godliness,  that  these  Gos- 
pels are  meant  to  show  us.  If  they  only  bring 
him  clearly  before  us,  make  his  personality  real 


266  WHO   WROTE    THE  BIBLE? 

and  familiar  and  vivid  before  our  eyes,  so  that  we 
may  know  him  and  love  him,  that  is  all  we  want 
of  them.  Infallibility  in  details  would  be  worth- 
less if  this  were  wanting  ;  any  small  discrepancies 
are  beneath  notice  if  this  is  here.  And  this  is 
here.  Read  for  yourselves.  From  the  page  of 
Matthew,  illuminated  with  the  words  of  pro- 
phecy that  tell  of  the  Messiah's  coming  ;  from 
the  vivid  and  rapid  record  of  Mark,  in  which  the 
Wonder-worker  displays  his  power ;  from  the 
tender  story  of  Luke,  speaking  the  word  of  grace 
to  those  that  are  lowest  down  and  farthest  off ; 
from  the  mystical  Gospel  of  the  beloved  disciple 
opening  to  us  the  deep  things  that  only  love  can 
see,  the  same  divine  form  appears,  the  same 
divine  face  shines,  the  same  divine  voice  is  speak- 
ing.    Behold  the  man  I 


CHAPTER   X. 

NEW   TESTAMENT   HISTORY    AND   PROPHECY. 

The  Acts  of  the  Apostles  contains  the  history 
of  the  Christian  church  from  the  time  of  the 
ascension  of  our  Lord  to  the  end  of  the  second 
year  of  Paul's  first  imprisonment  at  Rome.  The 
period  covered  by  the  history  is  therefore  only 
about  thirty  years.  The  principal  events  re- 
corded in  it  are  the  great  Pentecostal  Revival, 
the  Martyrdom  of  Stephen,  the  first  persecution 
of  the  church  and  the  dispersion  of  the  disciples, 
the  conversion  and  the  missionary  work  of  Paul, 
with  the  circumstances  of  his  arrest  at  Jerusalem, 
his  journey  as  a  prisoner  to  Rome,  and  a  brief 
account  of  his  residence  in  that  city.  In  the  first 
part  of  the  book  Peter,  the  leader  of  the  apos- 
tolic band,  is  the  central  figure  ;  the  last  part  is 
occupied  with  the  life  and  work  of  Paul. 

Who  is  the  writer  .-^  Irenaeus,  about  182,  names 
Luke  as  the  author  of  the  book,  and  speaks  as 
though  the  fact  were  undisputed.  He  calls  him 
"a  follower  and  disciple  of  apostles,"  and  declares 
that  "  he  was  inseparable  from  Paul  and  was  his 
fellow-helper  in  the  gospel,"  This  is  the  earliest 
distinct   reference   to   the   book   in   any  ancient 


268  lVI/0    WROTE    THE  BIBLE? 

Christian  writing.  After  this,  Clement  of  Alex- 
andria, Tertullian,  Origcn,  and  Eusebius  bear  the 
same  testimony.  But  these  arc  late  witnesses. 
The  earliest  of  them  testified  a  hundred  years 
after  the  death  of  Luke.  The  direct  testimony  to 
the  existence  of  this  book  in  the  first  two  cen- 
turies is  not,  therefore,  altogether  satisfactory. 
The    indirect    testimony  is,   however,   clear   and 


strong. 


That  the  Acts  was  written  by  the  author  of  the 
Third  Gospel  is  scarcely  doubted  by  any  critical 
scholar.  The  fact  of  the  identity  of  authorship  is 
stated  with  the  utmost  explicitness  in  the  intro- 
duction of  the  Acts.  "  The  former  treatise  I 
made,  O  Theophilus,  concerning  all  that  Jesus 
began  both  to  do  and  to  teach"  (Luke  i.  i,  2). 
The  author  of  the  Acts  of  the  Apostles  certainly 
intends  to  say  that  he  is  the  writer  of  the  Third 
Gospel.  If  he  is  not  the  author  of  the  Third 
Gospel  he  is  an  artful  and  shameless  deceiver. 
But  the  whole  atmosphere  of  the  book  forbids  the 
theory  that  it  is  a  cunning  imposition.  And  the 
internal  evidence  that  the  two  books  were  written 
by  the  same  author  is  ample  and  convincing. 
The  style  and  the  method  of  the  treatment  of  the 
two  books  are  unmistakably  identical.  Every 
page  bears  witness  to  the  fact  that  the  author  of 
the  Third  Gospel  and  the  author  of  the  Acts  are 
one  and  the  same  person.  Now  we  know,  be- 
yond all  reasonable  doubt,  that  the  Gospel  of 
Luke  was  written  certainly  as  early  as  the  year 


NEJV  TESTAMENT  HISTORY.  269 

80  A.  D.  And  there  is  as  good  reason,  as  we 
have  seen  already,  for  acceptini;  the  ancient  and 
universal  tradition  of  the  church  that  Luke  was 
its  author.  If  Luke  wrote  the  two  books,  the 
date  of  both  of  them  is  carried  back  to  the  last 
part  of  the  first  century.  But  the  concluding 
portion  of  the  Acts  of  the  Apostles  seems  to  fix 
the  date  of  that  book  much  more  precisely.  The 
author,  after  narrating  Paul's  journey  to  Rome, 
his  arrival  there,  and  his  first  unsatisfactory  in- 
terview with  the  Jewish  leaders,  closes  his  book 
with  this  compendious  statement  :  — 

*'  And  he  abode  two  whole  years  in  his  own 
hired  dwelling,  and  received  all  that  went  in  unto 
him,  preaching  the  kingdom  of  God,  and  teaching 
all  things  concerning  the  Lord  Jesus  Christ  with 
all  boldness,  none  forbidding  him." 

This  is  the  last  word  in  the  New  Testament 
history  respecting  the  Apostle  Paul.  Now  it  is 
evident  that  this  writer  was  Paul's  friend  and 
travehng  companion.  It  is  true  that  he  keeps 
himself  out  of  sight  in  the  history.  We  only 
know  when  he  joined  Paul  by  the  fact  that  the 
narrative  changes  from  the  third  person  singular 
to  the  first  person  plural ;  he  ceases  to  say  "he," 
and  begins  to  say  "we."  Thus  we  are  made 
aware  that  he  joined  Paul  at  Troas  on  his  second 
missionary  journey,  and  went  with  him  as  far  as 
Philippi ;  rejoined  him  at  the  same  place  on  his 
third  missionary  tour,  and  accompanied  him  to 
Jerusalem  ;  was  his  fellow-voyager  on  that  mem- 


2/0  IV//0    WROTE    THE  BIBLE? 

orable  journey  to  Rome,  and  there  abode  with 
him  for  two  years.  The  Epistle  to  the  Colossians 
and  the  Epistle  to  Philemon  were  written  during 
this  imprisonment  at  Rome,  and  in  both  of  these 
Epistles  Paul  speaks  of  the  fact  that  Luke  is  near 
him.  In  the  second  letter  to  Timothy,  which  is 
supposed  to  have  been  written  during  the  second 
imprisonment  at  Rome,  and  near  the  close  of  his 
life,  he  says  again,  "  Only  Luke  is  with  me.  Take 
Mark,  and  bring  him  unto  me,  for  he  is  useful 
to  me  for  ministering."  If  the  common  opinion 
concerning  the  date  of  this  letter  is  correct,  then 
Luke  must  have  remained  with  Paul  at  Rome 
until  the  close  of  his  life.  But  the  narrative  in 
Luke  does  not  give  any  account  of  the  closing 
years  of  Paul's  life.  It  breaks  off  abruptly  at 
the  end  of  his  two  years'  residence  in  Rome. 
Why  is  this }  Evidently  because  there  is  no 
more  to  tell  at  this  time.  The  writer  continues 
the  history  up  to  the  date  of  his  writing  and  stops 
there.  If  he  had  been  writing  after  the  death  of 
Paul,  he  would  certainly  have  told  us  of  the  cir- 
cumstances of  his  death  There  is  no  rational 
explanation  of  this  abrupt  ending,  except  that  the 
book  was  written  at  about  the  time  when  the 
story  closes.  This  was  certainly  about  6^  A.  d. 
And  if  the  Book  of  Acts  was  written  as  early  as 
this,  the  Gospel  of  Luke,  the  "former  treatise" 
by  the  same  author,  must  have  been  written 
earlier  than  this.  Thus  the  Book  of  Acts  not 
only  furnishes  strong  evidence  of  its  own  early 


NEW   TESTAMENT  HISTORY.  27  I 

date,  but  helps  to  establish  the  early  date  of  the 
third  Gospel. 

These  conclusions,  to  my  own  mind,  are  irre- 
sistible. No  theory  which  consists  with  the  com- 
mon honesty  of  the  writer  can  bring  these  books 
down  to  a  later  date.  And  I  cannot  doubt  the 
honesty  of  the  writer.  His  writings  prove  him  to 
be  a  careful,  painstaking,  veracious  historian.  In 
many  slight  matters  this  accuracy  appears.  The 
political  structure  of  the  Roman  Empire  at  this 
time  was  somewhat  complicated.  The  provinces 
were  divided  between  the  Emperor  and  the  Sen- 
ate ;  those  heads  of  provinces  who  were  directly 
responsible  to  the  Emperor  and  the  military  au- 
thorities were  called  propraetors  ;  those  who  were 
under  the  jurisdiction  of  the  Senate  were  called 
proconsuls.  In  mentioning  these  officers  Luke 
never  makes  a  mistake  ;  he  gets  the  precise  title 
every  time.  Once,  indeed,  the  critics  thought 
they  had  caught  him  in  an  error.  Sergius  Paulus, 
the  Roman  ruler  of  Cyprus,  he  calls  proconsul. 
**  Wrong !  "  said  the  critics,  "  Cyprus  was  an  im- 
perial province  ;  the  title  of  this  officer  must  have 
been  propraetor."  But  when  the  critics  studied  a 
little  more,  they  found  out  that  Augustus  put  this 
province  back  under  the  Senate,  so  that  Luke's 
title  is  exactly  right.  And  to  clinch  the  matter, 
old  coins  of  this  very  date  have  been  found  in 
Cyprus,  giving  to  the  chief  magistrate  of  the 
island  the  title  of  proconsul.  Such  evidences  of 
the  accuracy  of  the  writer  are  not  wanting.     It  is 


272  WHO    WROTE    THE   BIBLE? 

needless  to  insist  that  he  never  makes  a  mistake ; 
doubtless  he  does,  in  some  small  matters,  and  we 
have  learned  to  take  such  a  view  of  the  inspira- 
tion of  the  Scriptures  that  the  discovery  of  some 
small  error  docs  not  trouble  us  in  the  least ;  but 
the  admission  that  he  is  not  infallible  is  perfectly- 
consistent  with  the  belief  that  he  is  an  honest, 
competent,  faithful  witness.  This  is  all  that  he 
claims  for  himself,  this  is  all  that  we  claim  for 
him,  but  this  we  do  claim.  We  do  not  believe 
that  he  was  a  conscienceless  impostor.  We  do 
not  believe  that  the  man  who  told  the  story  of 
Ananias  and  Sapphira  was  himself  a  monumental 
liar.  We  believe  that  he  meant  to  tell  the  truth, 
and  the  whole  truth,  and  nothing  but  the  truth. 
Therefore,  we  believe  that  he  lived  in  the  times 
of  the  apostles,  and  received  from  them,  as  he 
says  that  he  did,  the  facts  that  he  recorded  in  his 
Gospel ;  that  he  was  the  traveling  companion  and 
missionary  helper  of  Paul,  as  he  intimates  that  he 
was,  and  that  he  has  given  us  a  true  account  of 
the  life  and  work  of  that  great  apostle. 

The  constant  and  undesigned  coincidences  be- 
tween the  Acts  of  the  Apostles  and  the  Epistles 
of  Paul  —  the  many  ways  in  which  the  personal 
and  historical  references  of  the  latter  support  the 
statements  of  the  former  —  are  also  strong  evi- 
dence of  the  genuineness  of  the  Acts.  Putting 
all  these  indirect  and  incidental  proofs  together 
the  historical  verity  of  the  Acts  seems  to  me  very 
firmly  established.     That   there  are  critical  dif- 


A'EIV  TESTAMENT  HISTORY.  2/3 

ficiiltics  may  be  admitted  ;  some  passages  of  this 
aneient  writing  arc  not  easily  explained  ;  there 
are  discrepancies,  for  example,  between  the  story 
of  the  resurrection  and  ascension  of  Christ  as 
told  in  Luke  and  the  same  story  as  related  in 
the  Acts  ;  possibly  the  writer  obtained  fuller  in- 
formation in  the  interval  between  the  publication 
of  these  two  books  by  which  he  corrected  the 
earlier  narrative.  In  the  different  accounts  of 
the  conversion  of  Paul  there  are  also  disagree- 
ments which  we  cannot  reconcile  ;  nevertheless, 
in  the  words  of  Dr.  Donaldson,  "  Even  these  very 
accounts  contain  evidence  in  them  that  they  were 
written  by  the  same  writer,  and  they  do  not  de- 
stroy the  force  of  the  rest  of  the  evidence."^ 

The  theory  of  Baur  that  this  book  was  written 
in  the  last  part  of  the  second  century  by  a  dis- 
ciple of  St.  Paul,  and  that  it  is  mainly  a  work  of 
fiction,  intended  to  bring  about  a  reconciliation 
between  two  bitterly  hostile  parties  in  the  church, 
the  Pauline  and  the  Petrine  sects,  need  not  de- 
tain us  long.  Baur  contends  that  the  church  in 
the  first  two  centuries  was  split  in  twain,  the  fol- 
lowers of  Peter  insisting  that  no  man  could  be- 
come a  Christian  without  first  becoming  a  Jew, 
the  followers  of  Paul  maintaining  that  the  Jewish 
ritual  was  abolished,  and  that  the  Gentiles  ought 
to  have  immediate  access  to  the  Christian  fellow- 
ship. Their  antagonism  was  so  radical  and  far- 
reaching  that  at  the  end  of  the  apostolic  age  the 

1  Encyc.  B)i/.,'\.  124. 


2/4  ^^'^^O    WROTE    THE  BIBLE? 

two  parties  had  no  dealings  with  each  other. 
"Then,"  in  the  words  of  Professor  Fisher,  who  is 
here  summarizing  the  theory  of  Baur,  "followed 
attempts  to  reconcile  the  difference,  and  to  bridge 
the  gulf  that  separated  Gentile  from  Jewish,  Paul- 
ine from  Petrine  Christianity.  To  this  end  va- 
rious irenical  and  compromising  books  were  writ- 
ten in  the  name  of  the  apostles  and  their  helpers. 
The  most  important  monument  of  this  pacifying 
effort  is  the  Book  of  Acts,  written  in  the  earlier 
part  of  the  second  century  by  a  Pauline  Christian 
who,  by  making  Paul  something  of  a  Judaizer, 
and  then  representing  Peter  as  agreeing  with  him 
in  the  recognition  of  the  rights  of  the  Gentiles, 
hoped,  not  in  vain,  to  produce  a  mutual  friendli- 
ness between  the  respective  partisans  of  the  rival 
apostles.  The  Acts  is  a  fiction  founded  on  facts, 
and  written  for  a  specific  doctrinal  purpose.  The 
narrative  of  the  council  or  conference  of  the 
Apostles,  for  example  (Acts  xx.),  is  pronounced  a 
pure  invention  of  the  writer,  and  such  a  represen- 
tation of  the  condition  of  things  as  is  inconsistent 
with  Paul's  own  statements,  and  for  this  and 
other  reasons  plainly  false.  The  same  ground  is 
taken  in  respect  to  the  conversion  of  Cornelius, 
and  the  vision  of  Peter  concerning  it."  ^ 

For  this  theory  there  is,  of  course,  some  slight 
historical  basis.  It  is  true,  as  we  have  seen,  that 
Peter  and  Paul  did  have  a  sharp  disagreement  on 
this  very  question  at  Antioch.     It   is  also  true 

^   The  Supernatural  Origin  of  Christianity,  pp.  211,  212. 


NEW   TESTAMENT  ///STORY.  275 

that  both  these  great  apostles  behaved  quite  in- 
consistently, Peter  at  Antioch,  and  Paul  after- 
wards at  Jerusalem,  when  he  consented  to  the 
propositions  of  the  Judaizers,  and  burdened  him- 
self with  certain  Jewish  observances  in  a  vain  at- 
tempt to  conciliate  some  of  the  weaker  brethren. 
That  the  story  of  the  Acts  unflinchingly  shows 
us  the  weaknesses  and  errors  of  the  great  apos- 
tles is  good  evidence  of  its  veracity.  But  the  no- 
tion that  it  is  a  work  of  fiction  fabricated  for  such 
purposes  as  are  outlined  above  is  utterly  incred- 
ible. Those  Epistles  of  Paul  which  Baur  admits 
to  be  genuine  contain  abundant  disproof  of  his 
theory.  There  never  was  any  such  schism  as  he 
fancies.  Paul  spends  a  good  part  of  his  time  in 
his  last  missionary  journey  in  collecting  funds 
for  the  relief  of  those  poor  "  saints,"  for  so  he 
calls  them,  at  Jerusalem  ;  and  every  reference 
that  he  makes  to  them  is  of  the  most  affectionate 
character.  Paul  recognizes  in  the  most  emphatic 
way  the  authority  of  the  other  apostles,  and  the 
fellowship  of  labor  and  suffering  by  which  he  is 
united  to  them.  All  this  and  much  more  of  the 
same  import  we  find  in  those  epistles  which  Baur 
admits  to  be  the  genuine  writings  of  Paul.  In 
short,  it  may  be  said  that  after  the  thorough  dis- 
cussion to  which  his  theory  has  been  subjected 
for  the  last  twenty-five  years,  it  has  scarcely  a 
sound  leg  left  to  stand  on.  It  may  be  admitted 
to  be  one  of  the  most  brilliant  works  of  the  his- 
torical   imagination  which   the  century  has  pro 


276  IVI70    WROTE    THE  BIBLE? 

cluced.  It  is  supported  by  vast  learning,  and  it 
has  thrown  much  light  on  certain  movements  of 
the  early  church  ;  but,  taken  as  a  whole  it  is  un- 
scientific and  contradictory  ;  it  raises  two  diffi- 
culties, where  it  disposes  of  one,  and  it  ignores 
more  facts  than  it  includes. 

We  return  from  this  excursion  through  the 
fields  of  destructive  criticism  with  a  strong  con- 
viction that  this  narrative  of  the  Acts  of  the 
Apostles  was  written  by  Luke  the  Evangelist, 
the  companion  and  fellow-worker  of  Paul,  and 
that  it  gives  us  a  veracious  history  of  the  earliest 
years  of  the  Christian  church. 

The  last  of  the  New  Testament  books  docs  not 
belong  chronologically  at  the  end  of  the  collec- 
tion. There  was  a  tradition,  to  which  Irenaeus 
gives  currency,  that  it  was  written  during  the 
reign  of  Domitian,  about  97  or  98  a.  d.  But  this 
tradition  is  now  almost  universally  discredited. 
Critics  of  all  classes  date  the  book  as  early  as 
75-79  A.  D.,  while  the  best  authorities  put  it 
nearly  ten  years  earlier,  in  the  autumn  of  6S  or 
the  spring  of  69.  As  Archdeacon  Farrar  sug- 
gests, it  would  be  vastly  better  if  these  books  of 
the  New  Testament  were  arranged  in  true  chro- 
nological order  ;  they  could  be  more  easily  un- 
derstood. The  fact  that  this  weird  production 
stands  at  the  end  of  the  collection  has  made  upon 
many  minds  a  wrong  impression  as  to  its  mean- 
ing, and  has  given  it  a  kind  of  significance  to 
which  it  is  not  entitled. 


A'£IF  TESTAMEXT  HISTORY.  2// 

The  authorship  of  the  book  is  quite  generally 
ascribed  to  John  the  son  of  Zcbedee,  brother  of 
James,  and  one  of  the  apostles  of  our  Lord. 
Even  the  destructive  critics  agree  to  this  ;  some 
among  them  say  that  there  is  less  doubt  about  the 
date  and  the  authorship  of  this  book  than  about 
almost  any  other  New  Testament  writing.  In 
making  this  concession  they  intend,  however,  to 
discredit  the  Johannine  authorship  of  the  Fourth 
Gospel.  The  more  certain  we  are  that  John 
wrote  the  Revelation,  they  argue,  the  more  cer- 
tain are  we  that  he  did  not  write  the  Gospel 
which  bears  his  name  ;  for  the  style  of  the  two 
writings  is  so  glaringly  contrasted  that  it  is  sim- 
ply impossible  that  both  could  have  come  from 
the  same  writer.  This  does  not  seem  nearly  so 
clear  to  me  as  it  does  to  some  of  these  learned 
and  perspicacious  critics.  A  great  contrast  there 
is,  indeed,  between  the  style  of  the  Revelation 
and  that  of  the  Gospel ;  but  this  contrast  may  be 
explained.  It  is  said,  in  the  first  place,  that  the 
Greek  of  the  Apocalypse  is  very  bad  Greek,  full 
of  ungrammatical  sentences,  abounding  in  He- 
braisms, while  that  of  the  Gospel  is  good  Greek, 
accurate  and  rhetorical  in  its  structure.  But  this 
is  by  no  means  an  unaccountable  phenomenon. 
The  first  book  was  written  by  the  apostle  very 
soon,  probably,  after  his  removal  to  Ephesus. 
He  had  never,  I  suppose,  been  accustomed  to  use 
the  Greek  familiarly  in  his  own  country  ;  had 
never  written  in  it  at  all,  and  it  is  not  strange 


2/8  lVJ/0    WROTE   THE   BIBLE? 

that  he  should  express  himself  awkwardly  when 
he  first  began  to  write  Greek  ;  that  the  Aramaic 
idioms  should  constantly  reproduce  themselves  in 
his  Greek  sentences.  After  he  had  been  living 
for  twenty-five  years  in  the  cultivated  Greek  city 
of  Ephesus,  using  the  Greek  languai^e  continu- 
ally, it  is  probable  that  he  would  write  it  more 
elegantly. 

But  it  is  said  that  the  rhetorical  style  of  the 
one  book  differs  radically  from  that  of  the  other. 
Doubtless.  The  one  book  is  an  apocalypse,  the 
other  is  a  biography.  John  may  not  have  been 
a  practiced  litterateur,  but  he  certainly  had  liter- 
ary sense  and  feeling  enough  to  know  how  to  put 
a  very  different  color  and  atmosphere  into  an 
apocalyptical  writing  from  that  which  he  would 
employ  in  a  report  of  the  life  and  words  of  Jesus. 
Without  any  reflection,  indeed,  he  would  instinc- 
tively use  the  apocalyptic  imagery ;  his  pages 
would  flare  and  resound  with  the  lurid  symbolism 
peculiar  to  the  apocalypses.  How  definite  a  type 
of  literature  this  was  we  shall  presently  see  ;  no 
writer,  while  using  it,  would  clearly  manifest  his 
own  personality.  And  if  through  all  this  dis- 
guise we  do  discern  symptoms  of  a  temper  more 
fervid  and  a  spirit  more  Judaic  than  that  which 
finds  expression  in  the  Fourth  Gospel,  let  us  re- 
member that  the  ripened  wisdom  of  the  old  man 
speaks  in  the  latter,  and  the  intense  enthusiasm 
of  conscious  strength  in  the  former.  This  John, 
let  us  not  forget,  was  not  in  his  youth  a  paragon 


NEW  TESTAMENT  HISTORY.  279 

of  mildness  ;  it  was  he  and  his  brother  James 
who  earned  the  sobriquet  of  Boanerges,  "  Sons 
of  thunder  ;  "  it  was  they  who  wanted  to  call 
down  fire  from  heaven  to  consume  an  inhospitable 
Samaritan  village.  Moreover,  we  shall  see  as  we 
go  on  that  the  times  in  which  this  apocalypse 
was  written  were  times  in  which  the  mildest- 
mannered  men  would  be  apt  to  forget  their  deco- 
rum, and  speak  with  unwonted  intensity.  A 
man  with  any  blood  in  him,  who  undertook  to 
write  in  the  year  68  of  the  themes  with  which  the 
soul  of  this  apostle  was  then  on  fire,  would  be 
likely  to  show,  no  matter  in  what  vehicle  of 
speech  his  thought  might  be  conveyed,  some 
sign  of  the  tumult  then  raging  within  him. 

All  these  circumstances,  taken  together,  en- 
able me  to  explain  the  difference  between  the  lit- 
erary form  of  the  Revelation  and  that  of  the  Gos- 
pel. But  when  we  come  to  look  a  little  more 
deeply  into  the  meaning  of  the  two  books,  we 
shall  find  that  beneath  all  this  dissimilarity  there 
are  some  remarkable  points  of  agreement.  Quite 
a  number  of  the  leading  ideas  and  conceptions  of 
the  one  book  reappear  in  the  other ;  the  idea  of 
Christ  as  the  Word  or  Logos  of  God,  the  rep- 
resentation of  Christ  as  the  Lamb,  as  the  Good 
Shepherd,  as  the  Light,  are  peculiar  to  John  ; 
we  find  them  emphasized  in  the  Gospel  and  in 
the  Revelation.  The  unity  of  the  two  books  in 
fundamental  conceptions  has  been  admirably 
brought  out  by  Dr.  Sears,  in  his  volume  entitled   « 


28o  IVl/O    WROTE    THE  BIBLE? 

"  The  Heart  of  Christ."  And  after  weighing  the 
evidence,  I  find  neither  historical  nor  psychologi- 
cal reasons  sufficient  to  overthrow  my  belief  that 
the  Fourth  Gospel,  as  well  as  the  Revelation,  was 
written  by  John  the  Apostle. 

The  Greek  name  of  the  book  means  an  uncov- 
ering or  unveiling,  and  is  fairly  interpreted,  there- 
fore, by  our  word  Revelation.  It  belongs  to  a 
class  of  books  which  were  produced  in  great  num- 
bers during  the  two  centuries  preceding  the  birth 
of  Christ  and  the  two  centuries  following  ;  and 
no  one  can  understand  it  or  interpret  it  who 
does  not  know  something  of  this  species  of  litera- 
ture, of  the  forms  of  expression  peculiar  to  it,  and 
of  the  purposes  which  it  was  intended  to  serve. 

We  have  in  the  Old  Testament  one  Apocalyp- 
tic book,  that  of  Daniel,  and  there  are  apocalyp- 
tical elements  in  two  or  three  of  the  prophecies. 
The  fact  that  the  Book  of  Daniel  bears  this  char- 
acter is  a  strong  argument  for  the  lateness  of  its 
origin  ;  for  it  was  in  the  last  years  of  the  Jewish 
nationality  that  this  kind  of  writing  became  pop- 
ular. We  have  six  or  seven  books  of  this  kind, 
which  are  written  mainly  from  the  standpoint  of 
the  old  dispensation,  part  of  which  appeared  just 
before  and  part  shortly  after  the  beginning  of  our 
era ;  and  there  are  nearly  a  dozen  volumes  of 
Christian  apocalypses,  all  of  which  employ  similar 
forms  of  expression,  and  are  directed  towards  sim- 
ilar ends.  Doubtless  these  are  only  a  few  of  the 
f  great  number  of  apocalyptical  books  which  those 


NEW  TESTAMENT  IIIS7X)  NY.  28  I 

ages  produced.  Their  characteristics  arc  well 
set  forth  by  Dr.  Davidson  :  — 

"This  branch  of  later  Jewish  literature  took 
its  rise  after  the  older  prophecy  had  ceased,  when 
Israel  suffered  sorely  from  Syrian  and  Roman 
oppression.  Its  object  was  to  encourage  and 
comfort  the  people  by  holding  forth  the  speedy 
restoration  of  the  Davidic  Kingdom  of  Messiah. 
Attaching  itself  to  the  national  hope,  it  pro- 
claimed the  impending  of  a  glorious  future,  in 
which  Israel  freed  from  her  enemies  should  enjoy 
a  peaceful  and  prosperous  life  under  her  long- 
wished-for  deliverer.  The  old  prophets  became 
the  vehicle  of  these  utterances.  Revelations, 
sketching  the  history  of  Israel  and  of  heathenism, 
are  put  into  their  mouths.  The  prophecies  take 
the  form  of  symbolical  images  and  marvelous 
visions.  .  .  .  Working  in  this  fashion  upon  the 
basis  of  well-known  w-ritings,  imitating  their 
style,  and  artificially  reproducing  their  substance, 
the  authors  naturally  adopted  the  anonymous. 
The  difficulty  was  increased  by  their  having  to 
paint  as  future,  events  actually  near,  and  to  fit 
the  manifestation  of  a  personal  Messiah  into  the 
history  of  the  times.  Many  apocalyptists  em- 
ployed obscure  symbols  and  mysterious  pictures, 
veiling  the  meaning  that  it  might  not  be  readily 
seen."  ^ 

"Every  time,"  says  Dr.  Harnack,  "  the  political 
situation  culminated  in  a  crisis  for  the  people  of 

1  Eiicyc.  Brii  ,  i.  174. 


282  IV//0    WROTE    THE   BIBLE? 

God,  the  apocalypses  appeared  stirring  up  the  be- 
lievers ;  in  spirit,  form,  plan,  and  execution  they 
closely  resembled  each  other.  .  .  .  They  all  spoke 
in  riddles  ;  that  is,  by  means  of  images,  sym- 
bols, mystic  numbers,  forms  of  animals,  etc.,  they 
half  concealed  what  they  meant  to  reveal.  The 
reasons  for  this  procedure  are  not  far  to  seek  : 
(i.)  Clearness  and  distinctness  would  have  been 
too  profane  ;  only  the  mysterious  appears  divine. 
(2.)   It  was  often  dangerous  to  be  too  distinct."  ^ 

That  these  writings  appeared  in  troublous  times, 
and  that  they  dealt  with  affairs  of  the  present  and 
of  the  immediate  future,  must  always  be  borne  in 
mind.  Certain  symbolical  conceptions  are  com- 
mon to  them  ;  earthquakes  denote  revolutions  ; 
stars  falling  from  heaven  typify  the  downfall  of 
kings  and  dynasties ;  a  beast  is  often  the  emblem 
of  a  tyrant ;  the  turning  of  the  sun  into  darkness 
and  the  moon  into  blood  signify  carnage  and  de- 
struction upon  the  earth.  We  have  these  sym- 
bolisms in  several  of  the  Old  Testament  writings 
as  well  as  in  many  of  the  apocalyptical  books 
which  are  not  in  our  canon  ;  and  the  interpreta- 
tion of  such  passages  is  not  at  all  difficult  when 
we  understand  the  usage  of  the  writers. 

Of  these  apocalyptic  books  one  of  the  most 
remarkable  is  the  Book  of  Enoch,  which  appears 
to  have  been  written  a  century  or  two  before 
Christ.  It  purports  to  be  a  revelation  made  to 
and  through  the  patriarch  Enoch  ;  it  contains  an 

1  Encyc.  Brit.,  xx.  496. 


NEIV   TESTAMENT  ///S'/VA'V.  283 

account  of  the  fall  of  the  angels,  and  of  a  progeny 
of  giants  that  sprung  from  the  union  of  these 
exiled  celestials  with  the  daughters  of  men  ;  it 
takes  Enoch  on  a  tour  of  observation  through 
heaven  and  earth  under  the  guidance  of  angels, 
who  explain  to  him  many  things  supernal  and 
mundane  ;  it  deals  in  astronomical  and  meteoro- 
logical mysteries  of  various  sorts,  and  in  a  series 
of  symbolical  visions  seeks  to  disclose  the  events 
of  the  future.  It  is  a  grotesque  production  ;  one 
does  not  find  much  spiritual  nutriment  in  it,  but 
Jude  makes  a  quotation  from  it,  in  his  epistle,  as 
if  he  considered  it  Holy  Scripture. 

"  The  Fourth  Book  of  Esdras  "  is  another  Jew- 
ish book  of  the  same  kind,  which  may  have  been 
written  about  the  hundredth  year  of  our  era.  It 
purports  to  be  the  work  of  Ezra,  whom  it  mis- 
places, chronologically,  putting  him  in  the  thirtieth 
year  of  the  Captivity.  The  problem  of  the  writer 
is  the  restoration  of  the  nation,  destroyed  and 
scattered  by  the  Roman  power.  He  makes  the 
ancient  scribe  and  law-giver  of  Israel  his  mouth- 
piece, but  he  is  dealing  with  the  events  of  his 
own  time.  Nevertheless,  his  allusions  are  veiled 
and  obscure  ;  he  speaks  in  riddles,  yet  he  speaks 
to  a  people  who  understand  his  riddles,  and  know 
how  to  take  his  symbolic  visions.  This  book  is 
in  our  English  Apocrypha,  under  the  title  2 'Es- 
dras. 

•'The  Book  of  Jubilees,"  which  assumes  to 
be  a  revelation  made  to  Moses  on  Mount  Sinai, 


284  ^^^^O    WROTE    THE  BIBLE? 

"The  Ascension  of  Moses,"  "The  Apocalypse  of 
Moses,"  and  the  "Apocalypse  of  Baruch,"  are 
other  similar  books  of  the  Jewish  literature. 

Of  apocalyptical  Christian  writings,  I  may  men- 
tion "The  Sibylline  Books,"  "The  Apocalypse  of 
Paul,"  "  The  Apocalypse  of  Peter,"  "  The  Rev- 
elation of  Bartholomew,"  and  "The  Ascension  of 
Isaiah,"  and  there  is  also  another  "  Apocalypse 
of  John,"  a  feeble  imitation  of  the  one  with  which 
our  canon  closes.  These  books  appeared  in  the 
second,  third,  and  fourth  centuries  of  our  era  ; 
they  generally  look  forward  to  the  second  com- 
ing of  Christ,  and  set  forth  in  various  figures  and 
symbols  the  conflicts  and  persecutions  which  his 
saints  must  encounter,  the  destruction  of  his  foes, 
and  the  establishment  of  his  kingdom. 

It  will  be  seen,  therefore,  that  the  Revelation 
of  St.  John  is  not  unique ;  and  the  inference  will 
not  be  rash  that  much  light  may  be  thrown  upon 
its  dark  sayings  by  a  careful  study  of  kindred 
books. 

It  may  be  answered  that  the  writer  of  this  book 
is  inspired,  and  that  nothing  can  be  learned  of 
the  meaning  of  an  inspired  book  by  studying  un- 
inspired books.  I  reply  that  no  inspired  book 
can  be  understood  at  all  without  a  careful  study 
of  uninspired  books.  The  Greek  grammar  and 
the"  Greek  lexicon  are  uninspired  books,  and  no 
man  can  understand  a  single  one  of  the  books  of 
the  New  Testament  without  carefully  studying 
both  of  them,  or  else  availing  himself  of  the  labor 


A'EIV  TESTAMENT  HISTORY.  285 

of  some  one  else  who  has  diligently  studied  them. 
An  inspired  writer  uses  language,  — the  same  lan- 
guage that  uninspired  writers  use  ;  the  meaning 
of  language  is  fixed  not  by  inspiration,  but  by 
usage  ;  you  must  study  the  grammar  and  the 
lexicon  to  learn  about  the  usage.  And  the  case 
is  precisely  similar  when  an  inspired  writer  uses 
a  peculiar  form  of  literature  like  the  apocalyptical 
writings.  He  knows  when  he  uses  symbolisms  of 
this  class  that  they  will  be  interpreted  according 
to  the  common  usage  ;  he  expects  and  desires 
that  they  shall  be  so  understood  ;  and,  therefore, 
in  order  to  understand  them,  we  must  know  what 
the  usage  is. 

When  our  Lord,  speaking  of  the  calamities 
which  were  about  to  fall  upon  the  Jewish  people, 
said,  "  Immediately  after  the  tribulation  of  those 
days,  the  sun  shall  be  darkened,  and  the  moon 
shall  not  give  her  light,  and  the  stars  shall  fall 
from  heaven,  and  the  powers  of  the  heavens  shall 
be  shaken,"  he  was  speaking  to  people  who  were 
perfectly  familiar  wnth  language  of  this  sort,  be- 
cause the  same  expressions  occur  over  and  over 
again  in  their  prophets,  and  are  there  distinctly 
declared  to  mean  great  political  overturnings. 
He  used  the  apocalyptic  phraseology,  and  he  ex- 
pected them  to  give  it  the  apocalyptic  significa- 
tion. If  we  wish  to  understand  the  Scripture, 
we  must  understand  the  language  of  Scripture, 
and  this  means  not  only  the  grammatical  forms, 
but  also  the  symbolic  usages  of  the  language. 


286  IVIIO    WROTE    THE  BIBLE? 

We  have  seen  that  the  apocalypses  are  apt  to 
appear  in  times  of  great  calamity,  and  we  have 
accepted  the  verdict  of  later  scholarship,  that  this 
Apocalypse  of  St.  John  appeared  about  6d>  or  69 
A.  D.  Was  this  a  time  of  trouble  in  that  Eastern 
world  ?  Verily  it  was  ;  the  most  appalling  hour 
perhaps  in  the  world's  history.  The  unspeakable 
Nero  was  either  still  upon  the  throne  of  the  Ro- 
man Empire,  or  had  just  reeled  from  that  em- 
inence to  the  doom  of  a  craven  suicide.  The  last 
years  of  his  life  were  gorged  with  horror.  The 
murder  of  his  brother,  the  burning  of  Rome, 
probably  by  his  connivance,  if  not  by  his  com- 
mand, in  order  that  he  might  sate  his  appetite 
for  sensations  upon  this  horrid  spectacle  ;  follow- 
ing this  the  fiendish  scheme  to  charge  this  in- 
cendiarism upon  the  Christians,  and  slaughter 
them  by  tens  of  thousands  in  all  the  cities  of  the 
Empire,  —  these  are  only  instances  of  a  career 
which  words  are  too  feeble  to  portray.  Those 
who  succeeded  him  in  this  supreme  power  were 
not  much  less  ferocious  ;  the  very  name  of  pity 
seemed  to  have  been  blotted  from  the  Roman 
speech  ;  the  whole  Empire  reeked  with  cruelty 
and  perfidy.  While  such  men  ruled  at  Rome  it 
could  not  be  supposed  that  the  imperial  represen- 
tatives in  the  provinces  would  be  temperate  and 
just.  Some  of  them,  at  any  rate,  had  learned  the 
lesson  of  the  hour,  and  were  as  perfidious,  as 
truculent,  as  base  as  their  master  could  have 
wished.      Such   a  one  was  that  Gessius  Fiorus 


A' Kir    IKSTAMEXT  HISTORY.  28/ 

who  was  the  procurator  of  Judca,  and  who  seemed 
to  have  exhausted  the  ingenuity  of  a  malignant 
nature  in  stirring  up  the  Jews  to  insurrection. 
By  every  species  of  indignity  and  cruelty  he 
finally  stung  the  long-suffering  people  into  a  per- 
fect furv,  and  the  lebellion  which  broke  out  in 
Palestine  in  the  year  66  was  one  of  the  most  fear- 
ful eruptions  of  human  nature  that  the  world  has 
ever  seen.  Florus  had  raised  the  demon  ;  now 
the  lecfions  of  Rome  must  be  called  in  to  exor- 
cise  it.  It  was  a  terrible  struggle.  All  the  ener- 
gies of  Jewish  fanaticisms  were  enlisted  ;  the  Zeal- 
ots, the  fiercest  party  among  them,  not  content 
with  slaughtering  their  Roman  enemies,  turned 
their  hands  against  every  man  of  their  own  nation 
who  ventured  to  question  the  wisdom  of  their  des- 
perate resistance.  In  Jerusalem  itself  a  reign  of 
terror  raged  which  makes  the  French  Revolution 
seem  in  comparison  a  calm  and  orderly  procedure. 
At  the  beginning  of  the  outbreak  Nero  had 
sent  one  of  his  trusted  generals,  Vespasian,  and 
Vespasian's  son  Titus,  to  put  down  the  insurrec- 
tion. Neither  of  these  soldiers  was  a  sentimen- 
talist ;  both  believed  as  heartily  as  did  Went- 
worth  in  later  years  that  the  word  of  the  hour 
was  Thorough.  They  started  with  their  armies 
from  Antioch  in  March,  6^,  resolved  on  sweeping 
Palestine  with  the  besom  of  destruction.  Cities 
and  villages,  one  by  one,  were  besieged,  captured, 
destroyed  ;  men,  women,  and  children  were  indis- 
criminately massacred.     The  Jewish  army  fought 


288  IV//0    WROTE    THE   BIBLE? 

every  inch  of  the  ground  like  tigers  ;  but  they 
were  overpowered  and  beaten  in  detail,  and 
steadily  forced  southward.  Blackened  walls,  pools 
of  blood,  and  putrefying  corpses  were  all  that  the 
Romans  left  in  their  rear  ;  ruthlessly  they  drove 
the  doomed  people  before  them  toward  their 
stronghold  of  Jerusalem.  In  the  autumn  of  that 
year  Vespasian  withdrew  his  army  into  winter- 
quarters,  and  left  the  Zealots  in  Jerusalem  to 
their  orgy  of  brigandage  and  butchery.  He  could 
well  afford  to  rest  and  let  them  do  his  deadly 
work. 

In  the  spring  of  the  following  year,  the  siege 
of  Jerusalem  began.  The  Christians  of  the  city 
had  fled  to  Pella,  east  of  the  Jordan  ;  the  remnant 
of  the  Jews  held  their  sacred  heights  with  the 
courage  of  despair. 

It  is  at  this  very  juncture  that  this  book  of  the 
Revelation  was  written.  John  testifies  that  it 
was  written  on  Patmos,  a  desolate  islet  of  the 
iEgean  Sea,  west  of  Asia  Minor,  to  which  he  had 
either  been  banished  by  some  tool  of  Nero,  or 
else  had  betaken  himself  for  solitude  and  reflec- 
tion. To  him,  in  this  retreat,  the  awful  tidino:s 
had  come  of  the  scourge  that  had  fallen  on  the 
land  of  his  fathers  ;  added  to  this,  the  conflagra- 
tion at  Rome,  the  Neronian  persecution,  all  the 
horrors  of  the  past  decade  were  fresh  in  his 
memory.  May  we  not  say  that  the  time  was  ripe 
for  an  apocalyptic  message  } 

It  is  in  these  events,  then,  that  we  must  find 


NEW   TEST  A  MEAT  HISTORY.  289 

the  explanation  of  much  of  this  symbohcal  lan- 
guage. Such  is  the  law  of  the  apocalypse,  and 
this  apocalypse  may  be  expected  to  conform  to 
the  law.  St.  John  is  instructed  by  the  angel  to 
write  "the  things  which  thou  sawest,  and  the 
things  which  are,  and  the  things  which  shall 
come  to  pass  hereafter,"  —  "the  things  which 
must  shortly  come  to  pass,"  the  first  verse  more  ex- 
plicitly states.  It  is  the  past  which  he  has  seen, 
the  present,  and  the  immediate  future  with  which 
his  visions  are  concerned.  It  is  not  any  attempt 
to  outline  the  whole  course  of  human  history  ;  it 
is  the  picture,  in  mystic  symbols,  of  the  present 
crisis  and  of  the  deliverance  which  is  to  follow  it. 

There  is  no  room  here  for  a  commentary  on 
the  Apocalypse  ;  I  will  only  indicate,  in  a  rapid 
glance,  the  outline  of  the  book. 

The  first  three  chapters  are  occupied  with  the 
epistles  to  the  seven  churches  which  are  in  Asia, 
administering  reproof,  exhortation,  comfort,  and 
counsel  to  the  Christians  in  these  churches,  — 
faithful,  stirring,  persuasive  appeals,  whose  mean- 
ing can  be  easily  understood,  and  whose  truth  is 
often  sorely  needed  by  the  churches  of  our  own 
time. 

Then  begins  the  proper  Apocalypse,  with  the 
first  vision  of  the  throne  in  heaven,  and  sitting 
thereon  the  Lamb  that  was  slain,  who  is  also  the 
Lion  of  the  tribe  of  Judah.  The  book  sealed 
with  seven  seals  is  given  to  him  to  open,  and  the 
opening  of  each  seal  discloses  a  new  vision.     The 


290  IVI^O  WROTE    THE  BIBLE? 

first  seal  opened  shows  a  white  horse  bearing  a 
rider  who  carries  a  bow  and  wears  a  crown,  and 
who  goes  forth  conquering  and  to  conquer.  This 
is  the  emblem  of  the  Messiah  whose  conquest  of 
the  world  is  represented  as  beginning.  But  the 
Messiah  once  said,  ''  I  came  not  to  bring  peace, 
but  a  sword,"  and  the  consequences  of  his  com- 
ins:  must  often  be  strife  and  sorrow  because  of 
the  malignity  of  men.  And  therefore  the  three 
seals  which  are  opened  next  disclose  a  fiery  horse, 
the  symbol  of  War,  a  black  horse,  whose  rider  is 
Famine,  a  pale  horse  in  whose  saddle  is  Death. 
The  opening  of  the  fifth  seal  shows  the  martyred 
multitude  before  the  throne  of  God.  The  sixth 
discloses  the  desolation  and  the  ruin  taking  place 
upon  the  earth.  Thus  the  mighty  panorama 
passes  constantly  before  our  eyes  ;  the  confusion, 
the  devastation,  the  woes,  the  scourges  of  man- 
kind through  which  Messiah's  Kingdom  is  ad- 
vancing to  its  triumph.  The  seals,  the  trumpets, 
the  vials  bring  before  us  representations  of  the 
retributions  and  calamities  which  are  falling  upon 
mankind.  Sometimes  we  seem  to  be  able  to  fix 
upon  a  historical  event  which  the  vision  clearly 
symbolizes  ;  sometimes  the  meaning  to  us  is 
vague ;  perhaps  if  we  had  lived  in  that  day  the 
allusion  would  have  been  more  intelligible. 

There  is,  however,  one  great  central  group  of 
these  visions  round  about  which  the  others  seem 
to  be  arrayed  as  scenic  accessories,  whose  inter- 
pretation the  writer  has  taken  great  pains  to  in- 


NEW  TESTAMENT  HISTORY.  29 1 

dicate.  These  are  the  visions  found  in  chapters 
xii.,  xiii.,  xvi.,  and  xvii.  The  woman,  sun-clad,  with 
the  moon  under  her  feet  and  a  crown  of  twelve 
stars  upon  her  head  (chap,  xii.),  is  beyond  all 
question  the  ancient  Jewish  church  ;  the  child 
w^hich  is  born  to  the  woman  is  the  Christian 
church  ;  the  great  red  dragon  that  seeks  to  de- 
vour the  child  is  the  Satanic  power,  the  Prince 
of  this  world.  The  Dragon  is  here  on  the  earth 
because  he  has  been  expelled  from  heaven.  The 
war  of  the  Dragon  against  the  woman  indicates 
the  persecutions  of  the  church  ;  the  flight  of  the 
woman  to  the  wilderness  may  symbolize  the  re- 
cent escape  of  the  mother  church  from  Jerusa- 
lem to  Pella. 

The  next  vision  shows  a  Beast,  coming  up  out 
of  the  sea,  with  seven  heads  and  ten  horns,  and 
on  his  horns  ten  diadems,  and  on  his  heads  names 
of  blasphemy.  Here  we  have  an  instance  of  that 
confounding  of  symbols,  the  merging  of  one  in 
another,  which  is  very  common  in  the  apocalyptic 
writings.  The  beast  is,  primarily,  Nero,  or  the 
Roman  Empire,  as  represented  by  Nero.  The 
ten  horns  are  the  ten  chief  provinces  ;  the  seven 
heads  are  seven  emperors.  "  It  is  a  symbol," 
says  Dr.  Farrar,  "interchangeably  of  the  Roman 
Empire  and  of  the  Emperor.  In  fact,  to  a  greater 
degree  than  at  any  period  of  history,  the  two 
were  one.  Roman  history  had  dwindled  down 
into  a  personal  drama.  The  Roman  Emperor 
could   say  with  literal   truth,   *  L Eiat  c  est  vioi.' 


292  iri/O   WROTE    THE  BIBLE? 

And  a  wild  beast  was  a  Jew's  natural  symbol 
either  for  a  Pagan  Kingdom  or  for  its  autocrat."  ^ 
I  can  do  no  better  than  to  repeat  to  you  a  small 
part  of  Dr.  Farrar's  further  comment  upon  this 
vision. 

"This  wild  beast  of  Heathen  Rome  has  ten 
horns,  which  represent  the  ten  main  provinces  of 
Imperial  Rome.  It  has  the  power  of  the  Dragon, 
that  is,  it  possesses  the  Satanic  dominion  of  the 
*  Prince  of  the  power  of  the  air.' 

"  Oil  each  of  its  heads  is  the  name  of  blasphemy. 
Every  one  of  the  seven  Kings,  however  counted, 
had  borne  the  (to  Jewish  ears)  blasphemous  sur- 
name of  Augustus  (Sebastos,  one  to  be  adored)  ; 
had  received  apotheosis,  and  been  spoken  of  as 
Divine  after  his  death  ;  had  been  crowned  with 
statues,  adorned  with  divine  attributes,  had  been 
saluted  with  divine  titles,  and,  in  some  instances, 
had  been  absolutely  worshiped,  and  that  in  his 
lifetime.   .   .  . 

"  The  diadems  are  on  the  horns,  because  the 
Roman  Proconsuls,  as  delegates  of  the  PZmperor, 
enjoy  no  little  share  of  the  Caesarean  autocracy 
and  splendor,  but  the  name  of  blasphemy  is  only 
on  the  heads,  because  the  Emperor  alone  receives 
divine  honors  and  alone  bears  the  daring  title  of 
Augustus."  2 

One  of  the  heads  of  this  Beast  was  wounded  to 
death,  but  the  deadly  wound  was  healed.     It  was 

1  The  Early  Days  of  Christianity,  p.  463. 

2  Ibid.,  p.  464. 


NEW   TESTAMENT  HISTORY.  293 

the  universal  belief  among  Pagans  and  Christians 
that  the  world  had  not  yet  seen  the  last  of  Nero. 
Either  his  suicide  was  feigned  and  ineffectual, 
and  he  was  in  hiding,  or  else  he  would  come  to 
life  and  resume  his  savage  splendors  and  his 
gilded  villainies.  To  make  it  certain  that  the 
writer  here  refers  to  this  expectation,  we  find,  in 
chapter  xvii.,  another  reference  to  the  Beast, 
which  seems  at  first  a  riddle,'  but  which  is  easily 
interpreted.  "  The  five  arc  fallen,  the  one  is,  the 
other  is  not  yet  come";  "The  Beast  that  thou 
sawest  was  and  is  not,  and  is  about  to  come  out 
of  the  abyss."  "The  Beast  that  was  and  is  not, 
even  he  is  an  eighth,  and  is  of  the  seven."  The 
head  and  the  Beast  are  here  identified.  The 
meaning  is  that  five  Roman  Emperors  are  dead, 
Augustus,  Tiberius,  Caligula,  Claudius,  Nero ; 
"  one  is,"  —  Galba  is  now  reigning  ;  "  the  other  " 
(Otho)  "is  not  yet  come;"  but  he  must  come 
soon  for  Galba  is  an  old  man  and  cannot  long 
survive,  and  "  the  Beast  that  was  and  is  not,"  — 
Nero,  — who  is  "about  to  come  out  of  the  abyss," 
—  to  return  to  life,  —  "even  he  is  an  eighth,  and 
is  of  the  seven."  He  is  one  of  the  seven,  for  he 
was  the  fifth,  and  he  will  be  the  eighth.  It  was 
the  universal  Christian  belief  that  Nero,  raised 
from  the  dead,  would  be  the  future  Antichrist, 
and  it  is  this  belief  which  the  vision  reflects.  To 
make  the  case  still  clearer  the  writer  gives  us,  by 
the  current  Hebrew  Kabbalistic  method,  the  num- 
ber of  the  Beast,  that  is  to  say,  the  numerical  value 


294  ^^'^^^    IVA'OIV':    TJJK   BIBLE? 

of  his  name.  Each  letter  of  the  old  alphabets 
has  a  numerical  value.  Thus  the  writer  of  the 
Sibyllines  points  out  the  Greek  name  of  Jesus 
—  l7/(rov9,  —  by  saying  that  its  whole  number  is 
equivalent  to  eight  units,  eight  tens,  and  eight 
hundreds.  This  is  the  exact  numerical  value  of 
the  six  Greek  letters  composing  the  Saviour's 
name,  io-|-8-[-200-f-7o4-400-f  200=888.  Pre- 
cisely so  John  here  tells  us  what  is  the  numerical 
value  of  the  letters  in  the  name  of  the  Beast. 
If  we  tried  the  Latin  or  the  Greek  names  of  Nero 
the  clue  would  not  be  found  ;  but  John  was  writ- 
ing mainly  for  Hebrews,  and  the  Hebrew  letters 
of  Kcsar  Neroiiy  the  name  by  which  every  Jew 
knew  this  Emperor,  amount  to  exactly  666. 

Many  other  of  the  features  of  this  veiled  de- 
scription tally  perfectly  with  the  character  of  this 
infamous  ruler  ;  and  when  the  evidence  is  all 
brought  together  it  seems  as  though  the  apostle 
could  scarcely  have  made  his  meaning  more  ob- 
vious if  he  had  written  Nero's  name  in  capital 
letters. 

This  is  the  central  vision  of  the  Apocalypse,  as 
I  have  said  ;  round  about  this  the  whole  cyclo- 
rama  revolves ;  and  it  has  been  the  standing 
enigma  of  the  interpreters  in  all  the  ages.  The 
early  church  generally  divined  its  meaning  ;  but 
in  later  years  the  high-soaring  exegesis  which 
has  spread  this  Apocalypse  all  over  the  centuries 
and  found  in  it  prophetic  symbols  of  almost  all 
the  events  that  have  happened  in  mediaeval  and 


NEW  TESTAMENT  HISTORY.  295 

modern  history,  has  identified  the  Beast  with 
countless  characters,  among  them  Genseric,  King 
of  the  Vandals,  Benedict,  Trajan,  Paul  V.,  Calvin, 
Luther,  Mohammed,  Napoleon.  All  this  wild 
guessing  arises  from  ignorance  of  the  essential 
character  and  purpose  of  the  apocalyptical  writ- 
ings. 

I  can  follow  this  enticing  theme  no  further. 
Let  it  suffice  to  call  the  attention  of  all  who  de- 
sire to  reach  some  sober  conclusions  upon  the 
meaning  of  the  book  to  Archdeacon  Farrar's 
"  Early  Days  of  Christianity,"  in  which  the  whole 
subject  is  treated  with  the  amplest  learning  and 
the  soundest  literary  judgment. 

The  Book  of  Revelation  has  been,  as  I  have  in- 
timated, the  favorite  tramping  ground  of  all  the 
hosts  of  theological  visionaries ;  men  who  pos- 
sessed not  the  slightest  knowledge  of  the  history 
or  the  nature  of  apocalyptic  literature,  and  whose 
appetite  for  the  mysterious  and  the  monstrous 
was  insatiable,  have  expatiated  here  with  bound- 
less license.  To  find  in  these  visions  descrip- 
tions of  events  now  passing  and  characters  now 
upon  the  stage  is  a  sore  temptation.  To  use 
these  hard  words,  the  Beast,  the  Dragon,  the 
False  Prophet,  as  missiles  wherewith  to  assail 
those  who  belong  to  a  school  or  a  party  with 
which  you  are  at  variance,  is  a  chance  that  no 
properly  constituted  partisan  could  willingly  fore- 
go. Thus  we  have  seen  this  book  dragged  into 
the  controversies  and  applied   to   the   events   of 


2g6  IVHO    WROTE    THE  BIBLE? 

all  the  centuries,  and  the  history  of  its  interpre- 
tation is,  as  one  of  its  interpreters  confesses,  the 
opprobrium  of  exegesis.  But  if  one  ceases  to 
look  among  these  symbols  for  a  predictive  out- 
line of  modern  history,  "  a  sort  of  anticipated 
Gibbon,"  and  begins  to  read  it  in  the  light  of  the 
apocalyptic  method,  it  may  have  rich  and  large 
meanings  for  him.  He  will  not  be  able,  indeed, 
to  explain  it  all  ;  to  some  of  these  riddles  the  clue 
has  been  lost  ;  but,  in  the  words  of  Dr.  Farrar, 
"  he  will  find  that  the  Apocalypse  is  what  it  pro- 
fesses to  be,  —  an  inspired  outline  of  contempo- 
rary history,  and  of  the  events  to  which  the  sixth 
decade  of  the  first  century  gave  immediate  rise. 
He  will  read  in  it  the  tremendous  manifesto  of  a 
Christian  seer  against  the  blood-stained  triumph 
of  imperial  heathenism  ;  a  paean  and  a  prophecy 
over  the  ashes  of  the  martyrs ;  the  thundering 
reverberations  of  a  mighty  spirit  struck  by  the 
fierce  plectrum  of  the  Neronian  persecution,  and 
answering  in  impassioned  music  which,  like  many 
of  David's  Psalms,  dies  away  into  the  language 
of  rapturous  hope."  ^ 

For  we  must  not  forget  that  this  is  a  song  of 
triumph.  This  seer  is  no  pessimist.  The  strife 
is  hot,  the  carnage  is  fearful,  they  that  rise  up 
against  our  Lord  and  his  Messiah  are  many  and 
mighty,  but  there  is  no  misgiving  as  to  the  event. 
For  all  these  woes  there  is  solace,  after  all  these 
conflicts  peace.     Even  in  the  midst  of  the  raging 

^  Early  Days  of  Christiamty,  p.  429. 


NEW  TESTAMENT  HISTORY.  297 

wars  and  persecutions,  the  door  is  opened  now 
and  again  into  the  upper  realm  of  endless  joy 
and  unfading  light.  And  he  "whose  name  is 
called  The  Word  of  God,"  upon  whose  garment 
and  whose  thigh  the  name  is  written,  "  King  of 
Kings  and  Lord  of  Lords,"  will  prevail  at  last 
over  all  his  foes.  The  Beast  and  the  Dragon, 
and  the  False  Prophet  and  the  Scarlet  Woman 
(the  harlot  city  upon  her  seven  hills  whose  mystic 
name  is  Babylon)  will  all  be  cast  into  the  lake  of 
fire  ;  then  to  the  purified  earth  the  New  Jerusa- 
lem shall  come  down  out  of  heaven  from  God. 
This  is  the  emblem  and  the  prophecy,  not  of  the 
city  beyond  the  stars,  but  of  the  purified  society 
which  shall  yet  exist  upon  the  earth,  —  the  frui- 
tion of  his  work  who  came,  not  to  judge  the 
world,  but  to  save  the  world.  It  is  on  these 
plains,  along  these  rivers,  by  these  fair  shores 
that  the  New  Jerusalem  is  to  stand  ;  it  is  not 
heaven ;  it  is  a  city  that  comes  down  out  of 
heaven  from  God.  No  statement  could  be  more 
explicit.  The  glorious  visions  which  fill  the  last 
chapters  of  this  wonderful  book  are  the  promise 
of  that  "  All  hail  Hereafter,"  for  which  every 
Christian  patriot,  every  lover  of  mankind,  is  al- 
ways looking  and  longing  and  fighting  and  wait- 
ing. And  he  who,  by  the  mouth  of  this  seer,  tes- 
tificth  the  words  of  the  prophecy  of  this  book 
saith,  "  Yea,  I  come  quickly.  Even  so,  come, 
Lord  Jesus." 


CHAPTER   XI. 

THE    CANON. 

We  have  studied  with  what  care  we  were  able 
the  historical  problem  of  the  origin  and  author- 
ship of  the  several  books  of  the  Old  and  New 
Testament ;  we  now  come  to  a  deeply  interesting 
question,  —  the  question  of  the  canon. 

This  word,  as  used  in  this  connection,  means 
simply  an  authoritative  list  or  catalogue.  The 
canon  of  the  Bible  is  the  determined  and  official 
table  of  contents.  The  settlement  of  the  canon 
is  the  process  of  determining  what  and  how  many 
books  the  Bible  shall  contain.  In  the  Old  Testa- 
ment are  thirty-nine  books,  in  the  New  Testa- 
ment twenty-seven  ;  and  it  is  a  fixed  principle 
with  Protestants  that  these  books  and  no  others 
constitute  the  Sacred  Scriptures,  — that  no  more 
can  be  added  and  none  taken  away. 

The  popular  belief  respecting  this  matter  has 
been  largely  founded  upon  the  words  with  which 
the  Book  of  Revelation  concludes  :  — 

"  For  I  testify  unto  every  man  that  heareth 
the  words  of  the  prophecy  of  this  book.  If  any 
man  shall  add  unto  them,  God  shall  add  unto  him 
the  plagues  which  are  written  in  this  book  :  and 


THE  canon:  299 

if  any  man  shall  take  away  from  the  words  of  the 
book  of  this  prophecy,  God  shall  take  away  his 
part  from  the  tree  of  life,  and  out  of  the  holy 
city,  which  are  written  in  this  book." 

The  common  notion  is  that  the  "book"  here 
referred  to  is  the  Bible  ;  and  that  these  sentences 
therefore,  are  the  divine  authorization  of  the  pres- 
ent contents  of  the  Bible,  a  solemn  testimony 
from  the  Lord  himself  to  the  integrity  of  the 
canon.  But  this  is  a  misapprehension.  The  book 
referred  to  is  the  Revelation  of  St.  John,  —  not 
the  Bible,  not  even  the  New  Testament.  When 
these  words  were  written,  says  Dr.  Barnes  in  his 
"Commentary,"  "the  books  that  now  constitute 
what  we  call  the  Bible  were  not  collected  into  a 
single  volume.  That  passage,  therefore,  should 
not  be  adduced  as  referring  to  the  whole  of  the 
Sacred  Scriptures."  In  fact,  when  these  words 
of  the  Revelation  were  written,  several  of  the 
books  of  the  New  Testament  were  not  yet  in 
existence  ;  for  this  is  by  no  means  the  last  of  the 
New  Testament  writings,  though  it  stands  at  the 
end  of  the  collection.  The  Gospel  and  the  Epis- 
tles of  John  were  added  after  this  ;  and  we  may 
trust  that  no  plagues  were  "  added  "  to  the  be- 
loved disciple  for  writing  them. 

Nevertheless,  as  I  said,  it  is  assumed  that  the 
contents  of  the  Bible  are  fixed  ;  that  the  collec- 
tion is  and  for  a  long  time  has  been  complete 
and  perfect  ;  that  it  admits  neither  of  subtrac- 
tions nor  of   additions  ;    that  nothing  is   in   the 


300  IV//0    WROTE    THE  BIHLE? 

book  which  ought  not  to  be  there,  and  that  there 
is  nothing  outside  of  its  covers  which  ought  to 
be  within  them  ;  that  the  canon  is  settled,  in- 
flexibly and  infallibly  and  finally. 

The  questions  now  to  be  considered  are  these  : 
Who  settled  it  ?  When  was  it  settled  ?  On  what 
grounds  was  it  determined  ?  Was  any  question 
ever  raised  concerning  the  sacredness  or  au- 
thority of  any  of  the  books  now  included  in  the 
canon  ?  Did  any  other  books,  not  now  included 
in  the  canon,  ever  claim  a  place  in  it  ?  If  so,  why 
were  these  rejected  and  those  retained  ? 

This  is,  as  will  be  seen,  a  simple  question  of 
history.  We  can  trace  with  tolerable  certainty 
the  steps  by  which  this  collection  of  sacred  writ- 
ings was  made  ;  we  know  pretty  well  who  did  it, 
and  when  and  how  it  was  done.  And  there  is 
nothing  profane  or  irreverent  in  this  inquiry,  for 
the  work  of  collecting  these  writings  and  fixing 
this  canon  has  been  done  mainly,  if  not  wholly, 
by  men  who  were  not  inspired  and  did  not  claim 
to  be.  There  is  nothing  mysterious  or  miraculous 
about  their  doings  any  more  than  there  is  about 
the  acts  of  the  framers  of  the  Westminster  Con- 
fession, or  the  American  Constitution.  They 
were  dealing  with  sacred  matters,  no  doubt,  when 
they  were  trying  to  determine  what  books  should 
be  received  and  used  as  Scriptures,  but  they  were 
dealing  with  them  in  exactly  the  same  way  that 
we  do,  by  using  the  best  lights  they  had. 

As  we  have  learned  in  previous  chapters,  the 


THE   CAXON.  301 

beginning  of  our  canon  was  made  by  Ezra  the 
scribe,  who,  in  the  fifth  century  before  Christ, 
newly  published  and  consecrated  the  Pentateuch, 
or  Five  Books  of  Moses,  as  the  Holy  Book  of  the 
Jewish  people. 

After  Ezra  came  Nehemiah,  to  whom  the  be- 
ginning of  the  second  collection  of  Jewish  Scrip- 
tures, called  the  Prophets,  is  ascribed  in  one  of 
the  apocryphal  books.  But  this  collection  was 
not  apparently  finished  and  closed  by  Nehemiah. 
The  histories  of  Joshua  and  Judges,  of  Samuel 
and  Kings,  and  the  principal  books  of  the  Pro- 
phets were  undoubtedly  gathered  by  him  ;  but  it 
would  seem  that  the  collection  was  left  open  for 
future  prophecies. 

About  the  same  time  the  third  group  of  the 
Old  Testament  Scriptures,  "  The  Hagiographa," 
or  "  Writings,"  began  to  be  collected.  No  book 
of  the  Bible  contains  any  information  concern- 
ing the  making  of  these  two  later  collections, 
the  Prophets  and  the  Hagiographa  ;  and  we  are 
obliged  to  rely  wholly  upon  Jewish  tradition,  and 
upon  references  which  we  find  in  Jewish  writers. 
Professor  Westcott,  who  is  one  of  the  most  con- 
servative of  Biblical  scholars,  says  that  "the  com- 
bined evidence  of  tradition  and  of  the  general 
course  of  Jewish  history  leads  to  the  conclusion 
that  the  canon  in  its  present  shape  was  formed 
gradually  during  a  lengthened  interval,  beginning 
with  Ezra  and  extending  through  a  part,  or  even 
the  whole  of   the   Persian   period,"  or  from  b.  c. 


302  VV//0    WROrE    THE   BIBLE  t 

458  to  332.  Without  adopting  this  conclusion, 
we  may  remark  that  this  last  date,  332,  was  nearly 
a  century  after  Nehemiah  and  Malachi,  the  last 
of  the  prophets  ;  so  that  if  the  canon  was  closed 
at  a  date  so  late  as  this,  it  must  have  been  closed 
by  men  who  were  certainly  not  known  to  have 
been  inspired.  If  it  was  forming,  through  all  this 
period,  then  it  must  have  been  formed  in  part  by 
men  in  behalf  of  whom  no  claim  of  inspiration 
has  ever  been  set  up. 

According  to  Jewish  tradition  the  work  of  col- 
lecting, editing,  and  authorizing  the  sacred  writ- 
ings was  done  by  a  certain  "  Great  Synagogue," 
founded  by  Ezra,  presided  over  by  Nehemiah, 
after  him,  and  continuing  in  existence  down  to 
about  the  year  200  b.  c.  This  is  wholly  a  tradi- 
tion, and  has  been  proved  to  be  baseless.  There 
never  was  such  a  synagogue ;  the  Scriptures 
know  nothing  about  it ;  the  apocryphal  writers, 
so  numerous  and  widely  dispersed,  have  never 
heard  of  it ;  Philo  and  Josephus  are  ignorant  con- 
cerning it.  None  of  the  Jewish  authors  of  the 
period  who  freely  discuss  the  Scriptures  and  their 
authority  makes  mention  of  this  Great  Syna- 
gogue. The  story  of  its  existence  is  first  heard 
from  some  Jewish  rabbin  hundreds  of  years  after 
Christ. 

We  have  proof  enough  in  the  New  Testament 
that  the  Jews  had  certain  Sacred  Scriptures  ;  the 
New  Testament  writers  often  quote  them  and  refer 
to  them  ;  but  there  is  no  conclusive  proof  that  they 


TIIK   CAXOX.  303 

had  been  gathered  at  this  time  into  a  complete 
collection.  Jesus  tells  the  Jews  that  they  search 
the  Scriptures,  but  he  does  not  say  how  many  of 
these  Scriptures  there  were  in  his  day  ;  Paul  re- 
minds Timothy  that  from  a  child  he  had  known 
the  Holy  Scriptures,  but  he  gives  no  list  of  their 
titles.  If  we  found  all  the  books  of  the  Old  Tes- 
tament quoted  or  referred  to  by  the  New  Testa- 
ment writers,  then  we  should  know  that  they  pos- 
sessed the  same  books  that  we  have.  Most  of 
these  books  are  thus  referred  to  ;  but  there  are 
seven  Old  Testament  books  whose  names  the 
New  Testament  never  quotes,  and  at  least  five  to 
which  it  makes  no  reference  whatever  :  Eccle- 
siastes,  Song  of  Solomon,  Esther,  Ezra,  and  Ne- 
hemiah.  To  Judges,  Chronicles,  and  Ezekiel  it 
refers  only  in  the  same  way  that  it  refers  to  a 
number  of  the  apocryphal  books.  Some  of  these 
omissions  appear  to  be  significant.  The  New 
Testament  gives  us  therefore  no  definite  informa- 
tion by  which  we  can  determine  whether  the  Old 
Testament  canon  was  closed  at  the  time  of  Christ, 
nor  does  it  tell  us  of  what  books  it  was  composed. 
We  have  seen  already  that  two  different  col- 
lections of  Old  Testament  writings  were  in  exist- 
ence, one  in  Hebrew,  and  the  other  a  translation 
into  the  Greek,  made  by  Jews  in  Alexandria,  and 
called  the  Septuagint.  The  latter  collection  was 
the  one  most  used  by  our  Lord  and  the  apostles  ; 
much  the  greater  number  of  quotations  from  the 
Old  Testament  found  in  the  Gospels  and  the  Epis- 


304  /^v/c;  WROTE  THE  bible? 

ties  are  taken  from  the  Septuagint.  This  Greek 
Bible  contained  quite  a  number  of  books  which  are 
not  in  the  Hebrew  Bible  :  they  were  later  in  their 
origin  than  any  of  the  Old  Testament  books  ; 
most  of  them  were  originally  written  in  Greek ; 
and  while  they  were  regarded  by  some  of  the 
more  conservative  of  the  Jews  in  Egypt  as  in- 
ferior to  the  Law  and  the  Prophets,  they  were 
generally  ranked  with  the  books  of  the  Hagio- 
grapha  as  sacred  writings.  This  is  evident  from 
the  fact  that  they  were  mingled  indiscriminately 
with  these  books  of  the  older  Scriptures.  You 
know  that  I  am  speaking  now  of  the  apocryphal 
books  which  you  find  in  some  of  your  old  Bibles, 
between  the  Old  and  New  Testaments.  These 
were  the  later  books  contained  in  the  Septuagint, 
and  not  in  the  Hebrew  Bible.  But  they  were  not 
sorted  out  by  themselves  in  the  Septuagint ;  they 
were  interspersed  through  the  other  books,  as  of 
equal  value.  Thus  in  the  Vatican  Bible,  of  which 
we  shall  learn  more  by  and  by,  Esdras  First  and 
Second  succeed  the  Chronicles  ;  Tobit  and  Judith 
are  between  Nehemiah  and  Esther ;  the  Wisdom 
of  Solomon  and  Sirach  follow  Solomon's  Song ; 
Baruch  is  next  to  Jeremiah  ;  Daniel  is  followed 
by  Susanna  and  Bel  and  the  Dragon,  and  the  col- 
lection closes  with  the  three  books  of  Maccabees. 
All  the  old  manuscripts  of  the  Bible  which  we 
possess  —  those  which  are  regarded  as  above  all 
others  sacred  and  authoritative  —  contain  these 
apocryphal  writings   thus   intermingled  with   the 


THE   CAXOX.  305 

books  of  our  own  canon.  It  is  clear,  therefore, 
that  to  the  Alexandrian  Jews  these  later  books 
were  Sacred  Scriptures ;  and  it  is  certain  also  that 
our  Lord  and  his  apostles  used  the  collection 
which  contained  these  books.  It  is  said  that  they 
do  not  refer  to  them,  and  it  is  true  that  they  do 
not  mention  them  by  name  ;  but  they  do  use 
them  occasionally.  Let  me  read  you  a  few  pas- 
sages which  will  illustrate  their  familiarity  with 
the  apocryphal  books. 

James  i.  19 :  "  Let  every  man  be  swift  to  hear, 
slow  to  speak."  Sirach  v.  1 1  ;  iv.  29:  **  Be  swift 
to  hear."     *'  Be  not  hasty  in  thy  tongue." 

Hebrews  i.  3 :  "Who  being  the  effulgence  of  his 
glory,  and  the  very  image  of  his  substance,  and 
upholding  all  things  by  the  word  of  his  power." 
Wisdom  vii.  26  :  "  For  she  (Wisdom)  is  the  bright- 
ness of  the  everlasting  light,  the  unspotted  mir- 
ror of  the  power  of  God,  and  the  image  of  his 
goodness." 

Rom.  ix.  21  :  "  Hath  not  the  potter  aright  over 
the  clay,  from  the  same  lump  to  make  one  part  a 
vessel  unto  honor,  and  another  unto  dishonor  .-^  " 
Wisdom  XV.  7 :  **  For  the  potter,  tempering  soft 
earth,  fashioneth  every  vessel  with  much  labor  for 
our  service;  yea,  of  the  same  clay  he  maketh  both 
the  vessels  that  serve  for  clean  uses,  and  likewise 
also  such  as  serve  to  the  contrary :  but  what  is 
the  use  of  either  sort,  the  potter  himself  is  the 
judge." 

I  Cor.   ii.    10,    11:  "The    Spirit    searcheth    all 


306  WHO    WROTE    THE   BIBLES 

things,  yea,  the  deep  things  of  God,  For  who 
among  men  knoweth  the  things  of  a  man,  save  the 
spirit  of  the  man,  which  is  in  him  ?  even  so  the 
things  of  God  none  knoweth  save  the  Spirit  of 
God."  Judith  viii.  14:  ''For  ye  cannot  find  the 
depth  of  the  heart  of  man,  neither  can  ye  perceive 
the  things  that  he  thinketh  :  then  how  can  ye 
search  out  God,  that  hath  made  all  these  thihgs, 
and  know  his  mind,  or  comprehend  his  purpose  ? " 

Several  similar  indications  of  the  familiarity  of 
the  New  Testament  writers  with  these  apocry- 
phal books  might  be  pointed  out.  These  are  not 
express  citations,  but  they  are  clear  appropria- 
tions of  the  thought  and  the  language  of  the 
apocryphal  writers.  We  have,  then,  the  most  in- 
dubitable proof  that  the  apocryphal  books  were 
in  the  hands  of  the  New  Testament  writers  ;  and 
so  far  as  New  Testament  use  authenticates  an 
Old  Testament  writing,  several  of  the  apocryphal 
books  stand  on  much  better  footing  than  do  five 
of  our  Old  Testament  books. 

It  is  true  that  the  Hebrew  or  Palestinian  canon 
differed  from  the  Greek  or  Alexandrian  canon  ; 
the  books  which  were  written  in  Greek  had  never 
been  translated  into  the  Hebrew,  and  could  not, 
of  course,  be  incorporated  into  the  Hebrew 
canon  ;  and  there  was  undoubtedly  a  strong 
feeling  among  the  stricter  Jews  against  recogniz- 
ing any  of  these  later  books  as  Sacred  Scrip- 
tures ;  nevertheless,  the  Greek  Bible,  with  all  its 
additions,   had   large   currency  among    the  Jews 


THE    CANChV.  ^oy 

even  in  Palestine,  and  the  assertion  that  our 
Lord  and  his  apostles  measured  the  Alexandrian 
Bible  by  the  Palestinian  canon,  and  accepted  all 
the  books  of  the  latter  while  declining  to  recognize 
any  of  the  additions  of  the  former,  is  sheer  as- 
sumption, for  which  there  is  not  a  particle  of 
evidence,  and  against  which  the  facts  already 
adduced  bear  convincingly.  Paul,  in  his  letter  to 
Timothy,  refers  to  the  '*  Scriptures  "  as  having 
been  in  the  hands  of  Timothy  from  his  childhood  ; 
and  we  have  every  reason  to  believe  that  the 
Scriptures  to  which  he  refers  was  this  Greek  col- 
lection containing  the  Apocrypha.  Whatever 
Paul  says  about  the  inspiiation  of  the  Scriptures 
must  be  interpreted  with  this  fact  in  mind.  To 
find  in  these  words  of  Paul  the  guarantee  of  the 
inspiration  and  infallibility  of  the  books  of  the 
collection  w^hich  are  translated  from  the  Hebrew, 
and  not  those  which  are  written  in  Greek,  is  a 
freak  of  exegesis  not  more  violent  than  fantastic. 
We  know  that  Paul  read  and  used  some  of  these 
apocryphal  books,  and  there  are  several  of  the 
books  in  our  Hebrew  Bible  that  he  never  quotes 
or  refers  to  in  the  remotest  way.  The  attempt 
which  is  often  made  to  show  that  the  New  Tes- 
tament writers  have  established,  by  their  testi- 
mony, the  Old  Testament  canon,  as  containing 
just  those  books  which  are  in  our  Old  Testa- 
ment, and  no  more,  is  a  most  unwarrantable  dis- 
tortion of  the  facts. 

It  is  true  that  at  the  time  of  Christ  the  Pales- 


308  U'l/O   WROTE    THE  BIBLE? 

tinian  Jews  had  not,  for  a  century  or  so,  added 
any  new  books  to  their  collection,  and  were  not 
inclined  to  add  any  more.  Their  canon  was  prac- 
tically closed  to  this  extent,  that  no  new  books 
were  likely  to  get  in.  But  it  was  not  yet  settled 
that  some  later  books,  which  had  been  trying  to 
maintain  a  footing  in  the  canon,  should  not  be  put 
out.  Esther,  Ecclesiastes,  and  Solomon's  Song 
were  regarded  by  some  of  the  Palestinian  Jews  as 
sacred  books,  but  their  right  to  this  distinction 
was  hotly  disputed  by  others.  This  question 
was  not  settled  at  the  time  of  our  Lord. 

"The  canon,"  says  Davidson,  "was  not  con- 
sidered to  be  closed  in  the  first  century  before 
and  the  first  after  Christ.  There  were  doubts 
about  some  portions.  The  Book  of  Ezekiel  gave 
offense,  because  some  of  its  statements  seemed 
to  contradict  the  Law.  Doubts  about  some  of 
the  others  were  of  a  more  serious  nature  — about 
Ecclesiastes,  the  Canticles,  Esther,  and  the  Prov- 
erbs. The  first  was  impugned  because  it  had 
contradictory  passages  and  a  heretical  tendency  ; 
the  second  because  of  its  worldly  and  sensual 
tone  ;  Esther  for  its  want  of  religiousness  ;  and 
Proverbs  on  account  of  inconsistencies.  This 
skepticism  went  far  to  procure  the  exclusion  of 
the  suspected  works  from  the  canon  and  their 
relegation  to  the  class  of  the  gemizim.  But  it 
did  not  prevail.  Hananiah,  son  of  Hezekiah,  son 
of  Garon,  about  32  B.  c,  is  said  to  have  recon- 
ciled the  contradictions  and  allayed  the  doubts. 


THR   CAXOX.  309 

But  these  traces  of  resistance  to  the  fixity  of  the 
canon  were  not  the  last.  They  reappeared  about 
65  A.  D.,  as  we  learn  from  the  Talmud,  when  the 
controversy  turned  mainly  upon  the  canonicity 
of  Ecclesiastes,  which  the  school  of  Schammai, 
which  had  the  majority,  opposed  ;  so  that  that 
book  was  probably  excluded.  The  question 
emerged  again  at  a  later  synod  in  Jabneh  or 
Jamnia,  when  R.  Eleaser  ben  Asaria  was  chosen 
patriarch,  and  Gamaliel  the  Second  deposed. 
Here  it  was  decided,  not  unanimously,  however, 
but  by  a  majority  of  Hillelites,  that  Ecclesiastes 
and  the  Song  of  Songs  'pollute  the  hands,'  i.  e,, 
belong  properly  to  the  Hagiographa.  This  was 
about  90  A.  D.  Thus  the  question  of  the  canon- 
icity of  certain  books  was  discussed  by  two 
synods."  ^ 

By  such  a  plain  tale  do  we  put  down  the  fiction, 
so  widely  disseminated,  that  the  canop  of  the 
Old  Testament  was  "fixed  "  long  before  the  time 
of  Christ,  and,  presumably,  by  inspired  men.  It 
was  not  "fixed,"  even  in  Palestine,  until  sixty 
years  after  our  Lord's  death  ;  several  of  the 
books  were  in  dispute  during  the  whole  apostolic 
period,  and  these  are  the  very  books  which  are 
not  referred  to  in  the  New  Testament.  Whether 
the  men  who  finally  "  fixed  "  it  were  exception- 
ally qualified  to  judge  of  the  ethical  and  spiritual 
values  of  the  writings  in  question  may  be 
doubted.     They  were  the  kind  of  men  who  slew 

^  Encyc.  Brit.,  v.  3. 


3IO  M'/IO    IVROTK    THK    HIBLE{ 

our  Lord  and  persecuted  his  followers.  When  we 
are  asked  what  are  our  historical  reasons  for  be- 
lieving that  Esther  and  Ecclesiastes  and  Solo- 
mon's Song  are  sacred  books  and  ought  to  be  in 
the  Old  Testament  canon,  let  us  answer:  It  is 
not  because  any  prophet  or  inspired  person  ad- 
judged them  to  be  sacred,  for  no  such  person  had 
anything  to  say  about  them  ;  it  is  not  because 
our  Lord  and  his  apostles  indorsed  them,  for 
they  do  not  even  mention  them  ;  it  is  not  be- 
cause they  held  a  place  in  a  collection  of  Sacred 
Scriptures  used  by  our  Lord  and  his  apostles,  for 
their  position  in  that  collection  was  in  dispute  at 
that  time  ;  it  is  because  the  chief  priests  and 
scribes  who  rejected  Christ  pronounced  them  sa- 
cred. The  external  authority  for  these  books  re- 
duces to  exactly  this.  Those  who  insist  that  all 
parts  of  the  Old  Testament  are  of  equal  value 
and  authority,  and  that  a  questioning  of  the  sa- 
credness  of  one  book  casts  doubts  upon  the 
whole  collection,  ought  to  look  these  facts  in  the 
face  and  see  on  what  a  slender  thread  they  sus- 
pend the  Bible  which  they  so  highly  value. 
These  later  books,  says  one,  "  have  been  deliv- 
ered to  us;  they  have  their  use  and  value,  which 
is  to  be  ascertained  by  a  frank  and  reverent 
study  of  the  texts  themselves  ;  but  those  who  in- 
sist on  placing  them  on  the  same  footing  of  un- 
disputed authority  with  the  Law,  the  Prophets, 
and  the  Psalms,  to  which  our  Lord  bears  direct 
testimony,  and  so  make  the  whole  doctrine  of  the 


THE   CANON.  311 

canon  depend  on  its  weakest  part,  sacrifice  the 
true  strength  of  the  evidence  on  which  the  Old 
Testament  is  received  by  Christians."  ^ 

Such,  then,  is  the  statement  with  respect  to  the 
Old  Testament  canon  in  the  apostolic  age.     The 
Palestinian  canon,  which  was  identical  with  our 
Old    Testament,  was  practically    settled    at    the 
synod  of  Jamnia  about  90  a.   d.,  though  doubts 
were  still  entertained  by  devout  Jews  concerning 
Esther.      The    Alexandrian    collection,    contain- 
ing our  apocryphal  books,  was,  however,  widely 
circulated  ;  and  as  it  was  the  Greek  version  which 
had  been  most  used  by  the  apostles,  so  it  was  the 
Greek  version  which   the  early  Christian  fathers 
universally  studied  and  quoted.     Very  few  if  any 
of  these  Christian  fathers  of  the  first  two  centu- 
ries  understood    the   Hebrew;    they    could    not, 
therefore,   use  the  Palestinian  manuscripts  ;  the 
Greek  Bible  w^as  their  only  treasury  of  inspired 
truth,  and  the  Greek  Bible  contained  the  Apo- 
crypha.     Accordingly    we    find    them    quoting 
freely  as    Sacred    Scripture  all  the    apocryphal 
books.     Westcott    gives    us    a  table,  in   Smith's 
"  Bible  Dictionary,"  of  citations  made  from  these 
apocryphal  books  by  fifteen  of  the  Greek  fathers, 
beginning  with   Clement  of    Rome   and    ending 
with  Chrysostom,  and  by  eight  Latin  writers,  be- 
ginning with  Tertullian  and  ending  with  Augus- 
tine.    Every  one  of   these  apocryphal    books  is 
thus  quoted   with   some   such   formula  as  "The 

1   The  Old  Testament  in  the  Jewish  Church,  p.  175. 


312  W//0    WROTE    THE  BIBLE? 

Scripture  saith,"  or  "  It  is  written,"  by  one  or 
more  of  these  writers ;  the  Book  of  Wisdom  is 
quoted  by  all  of  them  except  Polycarp  and  Cyril  ; 
Baruch  and  the  Additions  to  Daniel  are  quoted 
by  the  great  majority  of  them  ;  Origen  quotes 
them  all,  Clement  of  Alexandria  all  but  one,  Cy- 
prian all  but  two.  It  will  therefore  be  seen  that 
these  books  must  have  had  wide  acceptance  as 
Sacred  Scriptures  during  the  first  centuries  of 
the  Christian  church.  In  the  face  of  these  facts, 
which  may  be  found  in  sources  as  unassailable  as 
Smith's  *'  Bible  Dictionary,"  we  have  such  state- 
ments as  the  following,  put  forth  by  teachers  of 
the  people,  and  indorsed  by  eminent  theological 
professors  :  — 

"  We  may  say  of  the  apocryphal  books  of  the 
Old  Testament  that,  while  some  who  were  not 
Jews  and  who  were  unacquainted  with  Hebrew 
used  them  to  some  extent,  yet  they  never  gained 
wide  acceptance,  and  soon  dropped  out  alto- 
gether." 

"  Certain  apocryphal  writings  have  since  been 
bound  up  with  the  Septuagint,  but  there  is  no 
reason  to  think  that  they  made  any  part  of  it  in 
the  days  of  our  Saviour  "  ! 

**  These  books  wer^  not  received  as  canonical 
by  the  Christian  fathers,  but  were  expressly  de- 
clared to  be  apocryphal  "  ! 

The  last  statements  are  copied  from  a  volume 
on  the  Bible,  prepared  for  popular  circulation  by 
the  president  of  a  theological  seminary  I 


THE   CAXON.  313 

It  is  true  that  some  of  the  most  inquisitive 
and  critical  of  the  Christian  fathers  entertained 
doubts  about  these  apocryphal  books  ;  Melito  of 
Sardis  traveled  to  Palestine  on  purpose  to  in- 
quire into  the  matter,  and  came  back,  of  course, 
with  the  Palestinian  canon  to  which,  however,  he 
did  not  adhere.  Origen  made  a  similar  investi- 
gation, and  seems  to  have  been  convinced  that 
the  later  books  ought  to  be  regarded  as  uncanon- 
ical  ;  nevertheless,  he  keeps  on  quoting  them  ; 
Jerome  was  the  first  strenuously  to  challenge  the 
canonicity  of  these  later  Greek  books  and  to 
maintain  a  tolerably  consistent  opposition  to 
them.  While,  therefore,  several  of  these  early 
fathers  were  led  by  their  investigations  in  Pales- 
tine to  believe  that  the  narrower  canon  was  the 
more  correct  one,  their  opinions  had  but  little 
weight  with  the  people  at  large ;  and  even  these 
fathers  themselves  freely  and  constantly  quoted 
as  Sacred  Scripture  the  questionable  writings. 

In  393  the  African  bishops  held  a  council  at 
Hippo,  in  which  the  canon  was  discussed.  The 
list  agreed  upon  includes  all  the  Old  Testament 
Scriptures  of  our  canon,  and,  in  addition  to  them, 
Wisdom,  Ecclesiasticus,  Tobit,  Judith,  and  the 
two  books  of  Maccabees.  In  397  another  council 
at  Carthage  reaffirmed  the  list  of  its  predecessor. 
Augustine  was  the  leader  of  both  councils. 

In  spite  of  the  protests  of  Jerome  and  of  other 
scholars  in  all  the  centuries,  this  list,  for  sub- 
stance, was  regarded  as  authoritative,  until  the 


314  ^^'^/^    WROTE    THE   BIBLE? 

Council  of  Trent,  in  1546,  when  the  long  debate 
was  finally  settled,  so  far  as  the  Roman  Catholic 
Church  is  concerned,  by  the  adoption  of  the  Au- 
gustinian  canon,  embracing  the  apocryphal  books, 
the  list  concluding  with  the  following  anathema. 
"  If  any  one  will  not  receive  as  sacred  and  au- 
thoritative the  whole  books  with  all  their  parts, 
let  him  be  accursed."  This  determines  the  mat- 
ter for  all  good  Catholics.  Since  1546,  they  have 
known  exactly  how  many  books  their  Bible  con- 
tains. And  if  usage  and  tradition  are  and  ought 
to  be  authoritative,  they  have  the  strongest  rea- 
sons for  receiving  as  sacred  the  books  of  their 
Bible  ;  for  it  is  beyond  question  that  the  books 
which  they  accept  and  which  we  reject  have  been 
received  and  used  as  Sacred  Scriptures  in  all  the 
ages  of  the  church.  Most  of  us  who  do  not  ac- 
cept usage  and  tradition  as  authoritative  will  con- 
tinue, no  doubt,  to  think  our  own  thoughts  about 
the  matter. 

The  Council  of  Trent  marks  the  definite  sepa- 
ration of  the  Roman  Catholic  Church  from  the 
Protestant  reformers.  Up  to  this  time  there 
had  been  among  the  reformers  some  differences 
of  opinion  respecting  the  Old  Testament  books  ; 
when  they  were  excluded  from  the  Holy  Church 
and  were  compelled  to  fall  back  upon  the  author- 
ity of  the  Bible,  the  present  limits  of  the  canon 
at  once  became  an  important  question.  They 
did  not  settle  it  all  at  once.  Luther,  in  making 
his  German  version  of  the  Bible,  translated  Ju- 


THE   CANON.  315 

dith,  Wisdom,  Tobit,  Sirach,  Baruch,  i  and  2 
Maccabees,  the  Greek  additions  to  Esther  and 
Daniel,  with  the  Prayer  of  Manasseh.  Each  of 
these  books  he  prefaces  with  comments  of  his 
own.  First  Maccabees  he  regards  as  almost 
equal  to  the  other  books  of  Holy  Scripture,  and 
not  unworthy  to  be  reckoned  among  them.  He 
had  doubted  long  whether  Wisdom  should  not 
be  admitted  to  the  canon,  and  he  truly  says  of 
Sirach  that  it  is  a  right  good  book,  the  work  of 
a  wise  man.  Baruch  and  2  Maccabees  he  finds 
fault  with  ;  but  of  none  of  these  apocryphal 
books  does  he  speak  so  severely  as  of  Esther, 
which  he  is  more  than  willing  to  cast  out  of  the 
canon.  The  fact  that  Luther  translated  these 
apocryphal  books  is  good  evidence  that  he 
thought  them  of  value  to  the  church  ;  neverthe- 
less, he  considered  the  books  of  the  Hebrew 
canon,  with  the  exception  of  Esther,  as  occupy- 
ing a  higher  plane  than  those  of  the  Apocrypha. 
Gradually  this  opinion  gaineJ  acceptance  among 
the  Protestants  ;  the  apocryphal  books  were  sep- 
arated from  the  rest,  and  although  by  some  of 
the  Reformed  churches,  as  by  the  Anglican 
church,  they  were  commended  to  be  read  **  for 
example  of  life  and  instruction  of  manners,"  they 
ceased  to  be  regarded  as  authoritative  sources  of 
Christian  doctrine.  Since  the  sixteenth  century, 
there  has  been  little  question  among  Protestants 
as  to  the  extent  of  the  canon.  The  books  which 
now  compose  our  Old  Testament,  and  no  others. 


3l6  IV//0    WROTE    THE  BIBLE? 

have  been  found  in  the  Bible  of  the  Protestants 
for  the  past  three  hundred  years.  The  apocry- 
phal books  have  sometinnes  been  printed  between 
the  Old  and  the  New  Testaments,  but  they  have 
not  been  used  in  the  churches,^  nor  have  they 
been  regarded  as  part  of  the  Sacred  Scripture. 

The  history  of  the  New  Testament  canon  is 
much  less  obscure,  and  may  be  more  briefly 
treated.  The  Bible  of  the  early  Christians  was 
the  Old  Testament.  They  relied  wholly  upon 
this  for  religious  instruction  ;  they  had  no  thought 
of  any  other  Sacred  Scripture. 

I  have  explained  in  a  former  chapter  how  the 
Epistles  and  the  Gospels  originated  ;  but  when 
these  writings  first  came  into  the  hands  of  the 
disciples  there  was  not,  it  is  probable,  any  con- 
ception in  their  minds  that  these  were  sacred 
writings,  to  be  ranked  along  with  the  books  of 
the  Old  Testament,  They  read  them  for  instruc- 
tion and  suggestion  ;  they  did  not  at  first  think 
of  them  as  holy.  But  their  conviction  of  the 
value  and  sacredness  of  these  writings  soon  be- 
gan to  strengthen  ;  we  find  them  quoting  Gospels 
and  Epistles  with  the  same  formula  that  they 
apply  to  the  Old  Testament  books ;  and  thus 
they  began  to  feel  the  need  of  making  a  collec- 
tion of  this  apostolic  literature  for  use  in  the 
churches.  It  is  not  until  the  second  half  of  the 
second  century  that  any  such   collection  comes 

^  The  English  Church  uses  some  portions  of  them. 


THE   CANON.  317 

into  view.  It  consisted  at  first  of  two  parts,  The 
Gospel  and  The  Apostle  ;  the  first  part  contained 
the  four  Gospels,  and  the  second  the  Acts,  thir- 
teen Epistles  of  Paul,  one  of  Peter,  one  of  John, 
and  the  Revelation.  It  will  be  seen  that  this 
twofold  Testament  omitted  several  of  our  books, 
—  the  Epistle  to  the  Hebrews,  two  of  John's  Epis- 
tles, one  of  Peter's,  and  the  Epistles  of  James 
and  Jude. 

About  this  time  there  was  also  in  circulation 
certain  writings  which  are  not  now  in  our  canon, 
but  which  were  sometimes  included  by  the  au- 
thorities of  that  time  among  the  apostolic  writ- 
ings, and  were  quoted  as  Scripture  by  the  early 
fathers.  There  was  a  book  called  "  The  Gospel 
according  to  the  Egyptians,"  and  another  entitled 
"  The  Preaching  of  Peter,"  and  another  called 
"The  Acts  of  Paul,"  and  another  called  "The 
Shepherd  of  Hermas,"  and  an  epistle  attributed 
to  Barnabas,  and  several  others,  all  claiming  to  be 
sacred  and  apostolic  writings.  It  became,  there- 
fore, a  delicate  and  important  question  for  these 
early  Christians  to  decide  which  of  these  writings 
were  sacred,  and  which  were  not ;  and  they  began 
to  make  lists  of  those  which  they  regarded  as 
canonical.  The  earliest  of  these  lists  is  a  frag- 
mentary anonymous  canon,  which  was  made  about 
170.  It  mentions  all  the  books  in  our  New  Tes- 
tament but  four,  —  Hebrews,  First  and  Second 
Peter,  and  James. 

Irenaeus,  who  died  about  200,  had  a  canon  which 


3l8  WHO   WROTE    THE   BIBLE? 

included  all  the  books  of  our  New  Testament  ex- 
cept Hebrews,  Jude,  James,  Second  Peter,  and 
Third  John.  First  Peter,  Second  John,  and  "The 
Shepherd  of  Hermas  "  he  put  by  themselves  in  a 
second  class  of  writings,  which  he  thought  ex- 
cellent but  not  inspired. 

Clement  of  Alexandria  (180)  puts  into  his  list 
most  of  our  canonical  books,  but  regards  several 
of  them  as  of  inferior  value,  among  them  He- 
brews, Second  John,  and  Jude.  In  the  same  list 
of  inferior  writings  he  includes  "  The  Shepherd 
of  Hermas,"  the  "  Epistle  of  Barnabas,"  and  the 
"  Apocalypse  of  Peter." 

Tertullian  (200)  omits  entirely  James,  Second 
Peter,  and  Third  John,  but  includes  among  useful 
though  not  inspired  books,  Hebrews,  Jude,  **  The 
Shepherd  of  Hermas,"  Second  John,  and  Second 
Peter. 

These  are  the  greatest  authorities  of  the  first 
two  centuries.  No  Christian  teachers  of  that  day 
were  better  informed  or  more  trustworthy  than 
these,  and  it  will  be  seen  that  they  were  far  from 
agreeing  with  one  another  or  with  our  canon  ; 
that  each  one  of  them  received  as  sacred  some 
books  which  we  do  not  possess,  and  rejected  some 
which  we  receive. 

Coming  down  into  the  third  century,  we  find 
Origen  (250),  one  of  the  great  scholars,  wrestling 
with  the  problem.  He  seems  to  have  made  three 
classes  of  the  New  Testament  writings,  the  au- 
thentic, the  non-authentic,  and  the  doubtful    The 


THE   CAXOX.  319 

authentic  books  arc  the  Gospels,  the  Acts,  the 
thirteen  Epistles  of  Paul,  and  the  Apocalypse ; 
the  non-authentic  ones  are  *'  The  Shepherd  of 
Hermas,"  "The  Epistle  of  Barnabas,"  and  several 
other  books  not  in  our  canon  ;  and  the  doubtful 
ones  are  James,  Jude,  Second  and  Third  John, 
and  Second  Peter.  It  will  be  seen  that  Origen 
admits  none  that  are  not  in  our  collection,  but 
that  he  is  in  doubt  respecting  some  that  are  in  it. 

Facts  like  these  are  writ  large  over  every  page 
of  the  history  of  the  early  church.  And  yet  we 
have  eminent  theological  professors  asserting  that 
the  canon  of  the  New  Testament  was  finally  set- 
tled "  during  the  first  half  of  the  second  century, 
within  fifty  years  after  the  death  of  the  Apostle 
John."  A  more  baseless  statement  could  not  be 
fabricated.  It  is  from  teachers  of  this  class  that 
we  hear  the  most  vehement  outcries  against  the 
"  Higher  Criticism." 

Eusebius,  who  died  in  340,  has  a  list  agreeing 
substantially  with  that  of  Origen. 

Cyril  of  Jerusalem  (386)  includes  all  of  our 
books  except  the  Apocalypse,  and  no  others. 

Athanasius  (365)  and  Augustine  (430)  have 
lists  identical  with  ours.  This  indicates  a  steady 
progress  toward  unanimity,  and  when  the  two 
great  councils  of  Hippo  and  Carthage  confirmed 
this  judgment  of  the  two  great  fathers  last  named, 
the  question  of  the  New  Testament  canon  was 
practically   settled.^      Nevertheless,  considerable 

1  It  is  to  be  noted,  however,  that  the  reception  of  the  doubt- 


320  m/O    WROTE    THE  BIBLE? 

independent  judgment  on  the  subject  still  seems 
to  have  been  tolerated,  and  writings  which  we  do 
not  now  receive  were  long  included  in  the  New 
Testament  collection.  The  three  oldest  manu- 
scripts of  the  Bible  now  in  existence  are  the 
Sinaitic,  the  Vatican,  and  the  Alexandrian  Bibles, 
dating  from  the  fourth  and  the  fifth  centuries. 
Of  these  the  Sinaitic  and  the  Alexandrian  Bibles 
both  include  some  of  these  doubtful  books  in  the 
New  Testament  collection  ;  the  Sinai  Bible  has 
"The  Epistle  of  Barnabas  "  and  *'  The  Shepherd 
of  Hernias  ;  "  the  Alexandrian  Bible  the  Epistle 
of  Clement  and  one  of  Athanasius.  These  old 
Bibles  are  clear  witnesses  to  the  fact  that  the 
contents  of  the  New  Testament  were  not  clearly 
defined  even  so  late  as  the  fifth  century.  Indeed, 
there  was  always  some  freedom  of  opinion  con- 
cerning this  matter  until  the  Reformation  era. 
Then,  of  course,  the  Council  of  Trent  fixed  the 
canon  of  the  New  Testament  as  well  as  of  the 
Old  for  all  good  Catholics ;  and  the  New  Testa- 
ment of  the  Catholics,  unlike  their  Old  Testa- 
ment, is  identical  with  our  own. 

The  Protestants  of  that  time  were  still  in  doubt 
about  certain  of  the  New  Testament  books.  Lu- 
ther, as  every  one   knows,  was   inclined  to  reject 

ful  books  into  the  canon  does  not  imply  a  recognition  of  their 
equality  with  the  other  books  The  distinct  admission  of  their 
inferiority  was  made  by  all  the  ecclesiastical  authorities  of  that 
period.  None  of  the  early  fathers  believed  that  all  these  writ- 
ings were  equally  inspired  and  equally  authoritative. 


THE   CAXOX.  321 

the  Epistle  of  James  ;  he  called  it  *'  a  right  strawy 
epistle."  The  letter  to  the  Hebrews  was  a  good 
book,  but  not  apostolic  ;  he  put  it  in  a  subordinate 
class  Jude  was  a  poor  transcript  of  Second 
Peter,  and  he  assigned  that  also  to  a  lower  place. 
'*  The  Apocalypse,"  says  Davidson,  "he  consid- 
ered neither  apostolic  nor  prophetic,  but  put  it 
almost  on  a  level  with  the  Fourth  Book  of  Es- 
dras,  which  he  spoke  elsewhere  of  tossing  into 
the  Elbe."  Luther's  principle  of  judgment  in 
many  of  these  cases  was  quite  too  subjective ;  he 
carried  the  Protestant  principle  of  private  judg- 
ment to  an  extreme  ;  I  only  quote  his  opinions 
to  show  with  what  freedom  the  strong  men  of 
the  Reformation  handled  these  questions  of  Bib- 
lical criticism. 

Zwingli  rejected  the  Apocalypse.  CEcolampa- 
dius  placed  James,  Jude,  Second  Peter,  Second 
and  Third  John  and  the  Apocalypse  along  with 
the  Apocryphal  books,  on  a  lower  level  than  the 
other  New  Testament  Scriptures. 

The  great  majority  of  the  Reformers,  however, 
speedily  fixed  upon  that  canon  which  we  now 
receive,  and  their  decision  has  not  been  seriously 
called  in  question  since  the  sixteenth  century. 

I  have  now  answered  most  of  the  questions 
proposed  at  the  beginning  of  this  chapter.  We 
have  seen  that  while  the  great  majority  of  the 
books  in  both  Testaments  have  been  universally 
received,  questions  have  been  raised  at  various 
times  concerning  the  canonicity  of  several  of  the 


\ 


322  nV/O    WROTE    THE  BIBLE? 

books  in  either  Testament  ;  that  many  good  men, 
from  the  second  century  before  Christ  until  the 
sixteenth  century  after  Christ,  have  disputed  the 
authority  of  some  of  these  books.  We  have  seen 
also  that  quite  a  number  of  other  books  have  at 
one  time  and  another  been  regarded  as  sacred 
and  numbered  among  the  Holy  Scriptures  ;  we 
have  seen  that  the  final  judgment  respecting 
these  doubtful  books  is  different  in  different 
branches  of  the  church,  the  Roman  Catholic 
Church  and  the  Greek  Catholic  Church  admit- 
ting into  their  canons  several  books  that  the  Re- 
formed churches  exclude  from  theirs. 

We  have  seen  that  the  decision  which  has 
been  reached  by  the  several  branches  of  the 
church  respecting  this  matter  has  been  reached 
as  the  result  of  discussion  and  argument ;  that 
the  canonicity  of  the  disputed  books  was  freely 
canvassed  by  the  church  fathers  in  their  writings, 
by  the  church  councils  in  their  assemblies,  by  the 
Reformers  in  their  inquiries ;  that  no  supernat- 
ural methods  have  been  employed  to  determine 
the  canonicity  of  these  several  books  ;  but  that 
the  enlightened  reason  of  the  church  has  been 
the  arbiter  of  the  whole  matter. 

The  grounds  upon  which  the  Jews  acted  in  ad- 
mitting or  rejecting  books  into  their  Scriptures 
it  might  be  difficult  for  us  to  determine.  In 
some  cases  we  know  that  they  were  fanciful  and 
absurd.  But  the  grounds  on  which  the  Chris- 
tians proceeded  in  making  up  their  canon  we 
know  pretty  well. 


THE    CAXOX.  323 

The  first  question  respecting  each  one  of  the 
Christian  writings  seems  to  have  been  :  "  Was  it 
written  by  an  apostle?"  If  this  question  could 
be  answered  in  the  affirmative,  the  book  was 
admitted.  And  in  deciding  this  question,  the 
Christians  of  later  times  made  appeal  to  the 
opinions  of  those  of  earlier  times ;  authority  and 
tradition  had  much  to  do  in  determining  it. 
"Was  it  the  general  opinion  of  the  early  church 
that  this  book  was  written  by  an  apostle  ?  "  they 
asked.  And  if  this  seemed  to  be  the  case,  they 
were  inclined  to  admit  it.  Besides,  they  com- 
pared Scripture  with  Scripture :  certain  books 
were  unquestionably  written  by  Paul  or  Luke  or 
John  ;  other  books  which  were  doubted  were  also 
ascribed  to  them  ;  if  they  found  the  language  of 
the  disputed  book  corresponding  to  that  of  the 
undisputed  book,  in  style  and  in  forms  of  expres- 
sion, they  judged  that  it  must  have  been  written 
by  the  same  man.  Upon  such  grounds  of  exter- 
nal and  internal  evidence,  it  finally  came  to  be 
believed  that  all  of  the  New  Testament  books  ex- 
cept four  were  written  by  apostles,  and  that  these 
four,  Mark,  Luke,  The  Acts  of  the  Apostles,  and 
the  Epistle  to  the  Hebrews,  were  written  by  men 
under  the  immediate  direction  of  apostles. 

But,  it  may  be  said,  there  have  been  great  dif- 
ferences of  opinion  on  this  matter  through  all  the 
ages,  down  to  the  sixteenth  century  ;  how  do  we 
know  but  that  those  good  and  holy  men,  like 
Ignatius  and  Clement  and  Tertullian  and  Origen 


324  ^/'//<^    WROTE    THE   BIBLE  ? 

in  the  early  church,  and  Luther  and  Zwingli  and 
GEcolampadius  in  the  Reformed  church,  were 
right  in  rejecting  some  books  that  we  receive 
and  in  receiving  some  that  we  reject  ? 

If  you  were  a  good  Catholic,  that  question 
would  not  trouble  you.  For  the  fundamental 
article  of  your  creed  would  then  be.  The  Holy 
Catholic  Church,  when  she  is  represented  by  her 
bishops  in  a  general  council,  can  never  make  a 
mistake.  And  the  Holy  Catholic  Church  in  a 
general  council  at  Trent,  in  1546,  said  that  such 
and  such  books  belonged  to  the  Bible,  and  that 
no  others  do ;  and  the  council  of  the  Vatican,  in 
1870,  said  the  same  thing  over  again,  making  it 
doubly  sure ;  so,  that,  as  a  good  Catholic,  you 
would  have  no  right  to  any  doubts  or  questions 
about  it. 

But,  being  a  Protestant,  you  cannot  help  know- 
ing that  all  general  councils  have  made  grave 
and  terrible  mistakes  ;  that  no  one  of  them  ever 
was  infallible  ;  and  so  you  could  not  rest  satisfied 
with  the  decisions  of  Trent  and  the  Vatican,  even 
if  they  gave  you  the  same  Bible  that  you  now 
possess,  which,  of  course,  they  do  not.  What 
certainty  has  the  Protestant,  then,  that  his  canon 
is  the  correct  one  t  He  has  no  absolute  cer- 
tainty. There  is  no  such  thing  as  absolute  cer- 
tainty with  respect  to  historical  religious  truth. 
But  this  discussion  has  made  one  or  two  things 
plain  to  the  dullest  apprehension. 

The  first  is  that  the  books  of  this  Bible  are  not 


THE   CANON.  325 

all  of  equal  rank  and  sacredncss.  If  there  is  one 
truth  which  all  the  ages,  with  all  their  voices, 
join  to  declare,  it  is  that  the  Bible  is  made  up  of 
many  different  kinds  of  books,  with  very  different 
degrees  of  sacredness  and  authority.  For  one,  I 
do  not  wish  to  part  with  any  of  them  ;  I  find  in- 
struction in  all  of  them,  though  in  some  of  them, 
as  in  Esther  and  Ecclesiastes,  it  is  rather  as  rec- 
ords of  savagery  and  of  skepticism,  from  which 
every  Christian  ought  to  recoil,  that  I  can  see 
anv  value  in  them.  As  powerful  delineations  of 
the  kind  of  sentiments  that  the  Christian  ought 
not  to  cherish,  and  the  kind  of  doubts  that  he 
cannot  entertain  without  imperilling  his  soul, 
they  may  be  useful.  It  is  not,  therefore,  at  all 
desirable  that  these  ancient  records  should  be 
torn  asunder  and  portions  of  them  flung  away. 
That  process  of  mutilation  none  of  us  is  wise  \, 
enough  to  attempt.  Let  the  Bible  stand  ;  there 
are  good  uses  for  every  part  of  it.  But  let  us  re- ,  i  \ 
member  the  lesson  which  this  survey  has  brought  )|\ 
home  to  us,  that  these  books  are  not  all  alike,  and  p 
that  the  message  of  divine  wisdom  is  spoken  to  us  ^ 
in  some  of  them  far  more  clearly  than  in  others. 
Richard  Baxter  is  an  authority  in  religion  for 
whose  opinion  all  conservative  people  ought  to 
entertain  respect.  He  cannot  be  suspected  of 
being  a  "  New  Departure  "  man  ;  he  was  a  stanch 
Presbyterian,  and  he  passed  to  the  "Saints'  Rest" 
nearly  two  hundred  years  ago.  With  a  few  words 
of  his  upon  the  question  now  before  us,  this 
chapter  may  fitly  close  :  — 


326  II 7 /O    WROTE    THE  BIBLE? 

"  And  here  I  must  tell  you  a  great  and  need- 
ful truth,  which  Christians,  fearing  to  confess,  by 
overdoing,  tempt  men  to  infidelity.  The  Scrip- 
ture is  like  a  man's  body,  where  some  parts  are 
but  for  the  preservation  of  the  rest,  and  may  be 
maimed  without  death.  The  sense  is  the  soul  of 
the  Scripture,  and  the  letters  but  the  body  or  ve- 
hicle. The  doctrine  of  the  Creed,  Lord's  Prayer 
and  Decalogue,  Baptism  and  the  Lord's  Supper, 
is  the  vital  part  and  Christianity  itself.  The  Old 
Testament  letter  (written  as  we  have  it  about 
Ezra's  time)  is  that  vehicle  which  is  as  imperfect 
as  the  revelation  of  those  times  was.  But  as, 
after  Christ's  incarnation  and  ascension,  the 
Spirit  was  more  abundantly  given,  and  the  reve- 
lation more  perfect  and  sealed,  so  the  doctrine  is 
more  full,  and  the  vehicle  or  body,  that  is  the 
words,  are  less  imperfect  and  more  sure  to  us  ; 
so  that  he  which  doubteth  of  the  truth  of  some 
words  in  the  Old  Testament  or  of  some  circum- 
stances in  the  New,  hath  no  reason  therefore  to 
doubt  of  the  Christian  religion  of  which  these 
writings  are  but  the  vehicle  or  body,  sufficient  to 
ascertain  us  of  the  truth  of  the  History  and  Doc- 
trine." 1 

1   The  Catechizing  of  Christian  Families,  p.  36. 


CHAPTER   XII. 

HOW    THE    ROOKS    WERE    WRITTEN. 

The  books  of  the  Old  Testament  were  origi- 
nally written  upon  skins  of  some  sort.  The  Tal- 
mud provided  that  the  law  might  be  inscribed  on 
the  skins  of  clean  animals,  tame  or  wild,  or  even 
of  clean  birds.  These  skins  were  usually  cut 
into  strips,  the  ends  of  which  were  neatly  joined 
together,  making  a  continuous  belt  of  parchment 
or  vellum  which  was  rolled  upon  two  sticks  and 
fastened  by  a  thread.  They  were  commonly 
written  on  one  side  only,  with  an  iron  pen  which 
was  dipped  in  ink  composed  of  lampblack  dis- 
solved in  gall  juice. 

The  Hebrew  is  a  language  quite  unlike  our 
own  in  form  and  appearance.  Not  only  do  we 
read  it  from  right  to  left,  instead  of  from  left  to 
right,  but  the  consonants  only  of  the  several 
words  are  written  in  distinct  characters  on  the 
line ;  the  vowels  being  little  dots  or  dashes 
standing  under  the  consonants,  or  within  their 
curves.  These  vowel  points  were  not  used  in 
the  original  Hebrew  ;  they  are  a  modern  inven- 
tion, originating  some  centuries  after  Christ.  It 
is   true    that   it   was   the  belief   of   the  Jews   in 


328  ir//0    WROTE    THE  BIBLE? 

former  times  that  these  vowel  points  were  an 
original  part  of  the  language ;  their  scholars 
made  this  claim  with  great  confidence,  which 
shows  how  little  reliance  is  to  be  placed  on  Jew- 
ish tradition.  The  evidence  is  abundant  that  the 
Hebrew  was  originally  written  without  vowels, 
precisely  as  stenographers  often  write  in  these 
days.  We  know  from  the  testimony  of  old  stu- 
dents and  interpreters  of  the  Hebrew  that  they 
constantly  encountered  this  difficulty  in  reading 
the  language.  Write  a  paragraph  of  our  own  lan- 
guage without  vowels  and  look  at  it.  Or,  better, 
ask  some  one  else  to  treat  for  you  in  the  same 
way  a  paragraph  with  which  you  are  not  familiar, 
and  see  if  you  can  decipher  it.  Undoubtedly, 
you  could  with  some  difficulty  make  out  the 
sense  of  most  passages.  It  would  puzzle  you  at 
first,  but  after  you  had  had  some  practice  in  sup- 
plying the  vowels  you  would  learn  to  read  quite 
readily.  Stenographers,  as  I  have  said,  have  a 
somewhat  similar  task.  Nevertheless,  you  would 
sometimes  be  in  uncertainty  as  to  the  words. 
Suppose  you  have  the  three  consonants  brd,  how 
would  you  know  whether  the  word  was  bard,  or 
bird,  or  bread,  or  board,  or  brad,  or  broad,  or 
bride,  or  braid,  or  brood,  or  breed  .''  It  might  be 
any  one  of  them.  You  could  usually  tell  what  it 
was  by  a  glance  at  the  connection,  but  you  could 
not  tell  infallibly,  for  there  might  be  sentences  in 
which  more  than  one  of  these  words  would  make 
sense,  and  it  would  be  impossible  to  determine 


NOW   THE  BOOK'S  WERE   WRITTEN.        329 

which  the  writer  meant  to  use.  Now  the  old  He- 
brew as  it  came  from  the  hands  of  the  original 
writers  was  all  in  this  form  ;  while,  therefore,  the 
meaning  of  the  writer  can  generally  be  gained  with 
sufficient  accuracy,  you  see  at  a  glance  that  abso- 
lute certainty  is  out  of  the  question  ;  that  the 
Jewish  scholars  who  supplied  these  vowel  points 
a  thousand  years  or  more  after  the  original  manu- 
scripts were  written  may  sometimes  have  got  the 
wrong  word. 

Jerome  gives  numerous  illustrations  of  this  un- 
certainty. In  Jer.  ix.  21,  "Death  is  come  up 
into  our  windows,"  he  says  that  we  have  for  the 
first  word  the  three  Hebrew  consonants  corre- 
sponding to  our  dbr ;  the  word  may  be  dabavy 
signifying  death,  or  deber,  signifying  pestilence  ; 
it  is  impossible  to  tell  which  it  is.  In  Habakkuk 
iii.  5,  we  have  the  same  consonants,  and  there 
the  word  is  written  pestilence.  Either  word  will 
made  good  sense  in  either  place  ;  and  we  are 
perfectly  helpless  in  our  choice  between  them. 
Again,  in  Isaiah  xxvi.  14,  we  have  a  prediction 
concerning  the  wicked,  "  Therefore  hast  thou 
visited  and  destroyed  them  and  made  all  their 
memory  to  perish."  The  Hebrew  word  here 
translated  "  memory "  consists  of  three  conso- 
nants represented  by  our  English  zkr ;  it  may  be 
the  word  zeker,  which  signifies  memory,  or  the 
word  zakar,  which  signifies  a  male  person.  And 
Jerome  says  that  it  is  believed  that  Saul  was  de- 
ceived,  perhaps    willingly,   by   the   difference   in 


330  n'l/O    WROTE    THE  BIBLE? 

these  words  (i  Sam.  xv.)  ;  having  been  com- 
manded to  cut  off  every  zeker — memorial -or  ves- 
tige —  of  Amalek,  he  took  the  word  to  be  zakar, 
instead  of  zeker\  and  contented  himself  with  de- 
stroying the  males  of  the  army  and  keeping  for 
himself  the  spoil.  Jerome's  conjecture  in  this 
case  is  sufificiently  fanciful  ;  nevertheless  he  illus- 
trates the  impossibility  of  determining  the  exact 
meaning  of  many  Hebrew  sentences.  This  im- 
possibility is  abundantly  demonstrated  by  the 
Septuagint,  for  we  find  many  undoubted  errors 
in  that  translation  from  the  Hebrew  into  the 
Greek,  which  have  arisen  from  this  lack  of  pre- 
cision in  the  Hebrew  language. 

When,  therefore,  we  know  that  the  Bible  was 
written  in  such  a  language  —  a  language  without 
vowels  —  and  that  it  was  not  until  six  hundred 
years  after  Christ  that  the  vowel  points  were  in- 
vented and  the  words  were  written  out  in  full, 
the  theory  of  the  verbal  inerrancy  of  the  text  as 
we  now  have  it  becomes  incredible.  Unless  the 
men  who  supplied  the  vowel  points  were  gifted 
with  supernatural  knowledge  they  must  have 
made  mistakes  in  spelling  out  some  of  these 
words.  I  do  not  believe  that  these  mistakes 
were  serious,  or  that  they  affect  in  any.  impor- 
tant way  the  meaning  of  the  Scripture,  but  the 
assumption  that  in  this  stupendous  game  of 
guess-work  no  wrong  guesses  were  made  is  in 
the  hijihest  decfree  gratuitous.  The  substantial 
truthfulness  of  the  record  is  not  impeached  by 


HO IV  THE   BOOKS  WERE   WRITTEN.       33  I 

this  discovery,  but  the  verbal  inerrancy  of  the 
document  can  never  be  maintained  by  any  hon- 
est man  who  knows  these  facts. 

It  is  unsafe  and  mischievous  to  indulge  in  a 
pnori  reasonings  about  inspiration  ;  we  have  had 
too  much  of  that ;  but  the  following  proposition 
is  unassailable  :  If  the  Divine  Wisdom  had  pro- 
posed to  deliver  to  man  an  infallible  book,  he 
would  not  have  had  it  recorded  in  a  language 
whose  written  words  consist  only  of  consonants, 
leaving  readers  a  thousand  years  after  to  fill  in 
the  vowels  by  conjecture.  The  very  fact  that 
such  a  language  was  chosen  is  the  conclusive 
and  unanswerable  evidence  that  God  never  de- 
signed to  give  us  an  infallible  book. 

We  are  familiar  with  the  fact  that  the  Old  Tes- 
tament writings  in  general  use  among  the  early 
churches  were  those  of  the  Septuagint.  The 
Christians  from  the  second  to  the  sixteenth  cen- 
turies knew  very  little  Hebrew.  But  during  all 
these  ages  the  Palestinian  Jews  and  their  succes- 
sors in  other  lands  were  preserving  their  own 
Scriptures  ;  it  was  they  who  added  at  a  late  day 
—  probably  as  late  as  the  sixth  century  —  the 
vowel  points,  which  were  invented  in  Syria  ;  and 
when,  at  length,  under  the  impulse  of  Biblical 
study  which  led  to  the  Reformation,  Christian 
scholars  began  to  think  of  going  back  to  the  ori- 
ginal Hebrew,  they  were  obliged  to  obtain  from 
the  Jews  the  copies  which  they  studied.  It  is 
somewhat  remarkable  that  the  Jews,  who  were 


332  WHO    WROTE    THE  BIBLE? 

the  exclusive  custodians  of  the  Hebrew  writings 
up  to  the  sixteenth  century,  had  not  been  careful 
to  preserve  their  old  manuscripts.  After  the  vowel 
points  had  been  introduced  into  the  text,  they 
seem  to  have  been  willing  that  copies  not  written 
in  this  manner  should  pass  out  of  existence.  Ac- 
cordingly we  have  few  Hebrew  manuscripts  that 
arc  even  supposed  to  be  more  than  six  or  seven 
hundred  years  old.  There  is  one  copy  of  the 
Pentateuch  which  may  have  been  made  as  early 
as  580  A.  D.,  but  this  is  extremely  doubtful ;  aside 
from  this  I  do  not  know  that  there  are  any 
Hebrew  Bibles  which  claim  to  be  older  than  the 
ninth  century.  Of  these  Hebrew  manuscripts 
nearly  six  hundred  are  now  known  to  be  in  exist- 
ence, but  the  greater  part  of  these  are  only  frag- 
mentary copies  of  the  Pentateuch  or  of  single 
books.  There  are  two  classes  of  these  —  syna- 
gogue rolls,  prepared  for  reading  in  the  way  that 
I  have  described,  and  manuscripts  in  the  book 
form,  some  on  parchment  and  some  on  paper. 

The  variations  in  these  manuscripts  are  few. 
Compared  with  the  Greek  manuscripts  of  the 
New  Testament,  the  accuracy  of  these  Hebrew 
codices  is  remarkable.  It  is  evident  that  the 
care  of  the  Scribes  to  guard  their  Scriptures 
against  error  has  been  scrupulous  and  vigilant. 
Doubtless  this  intense  devotion  to  the  very  letter 
of  the  sacred  books  has  been  exercised  for  many 
centuries.  We  know  that  in  the  earliest  days 
this  precision  was  not  sought ;  for  the  Septuagint 


I/O IV  THE  BOOK'S  WERE  WRITTEN.       333 

translation,  made  during  the  second  and  third 
centuries  before  Christ,  gives  us  indubitable 
proof,  when  we  compare  it  with  the  Hebrew  text, 
that  changes,  some  of  them  radical  and  sweeping, 
have  been  made  in  the  text  of  the  Hebrew  books 
since  that  translation  was  finished.  But  it  is 
evident  that  the  Scribes  at  an  early  day,  cer- 
tainly as  early  as  the  beginning  of  the  Christian 
era,  determined  to  have  a  uniform  and  an  un- 
changeable text.  For  this  purpose  they  chose 
some  manuscript  copy  of  the  Scriptures,  doubt- 
less the  one  which  seemed  to  them  most  accu- 
rate, and  made  that  the  standard  ;  all  the  copies 
made  since  that  time  have  been  religiously  con- 
formed to  that.  Consequently,  all  the  Hebrew 
manuscripts  now  in  existence  are  remarkably 
uniform.  The  Old  Testament  contains  more 
than  three  times  as  many  pages  as  the  New  Tes- 
tament ;  but  while  we  have  more  than  one  hun- 
dred and  fifty  thousand  "various  readings"  in 
the  Greek  manuscripts  and  versions  of  the  New 
Testament,  we  have  less  than  ten  thousand  such 
variations  in  those  of  the  Old  Testament.  It 
must  be  remembered,  however,  that  this  uniform- 
ity has  its  source  in  some  copy  chosen  to  be  the 
standard  hundreds  of  years  after  most  of  the  Old 
Testament  books  were  written  ;  and  it  does  not 
guarantee  the  close  correspondence  between  this 
copy  and  the  autographs  of  the  original  writers.^ 

1  For  an  interesting  discussion  of  the  preservation  and  trans- 
mission of  the  Hebrew  text,  the  reader  is  referred  to  Mr.  Robert- 


334  ^^'■^^^    WROTE    THE  BIBLE? 

Our  chief  interest  centres,  however,  in  the 
Greek  manuscripts  of  the  Bible  preserved  and 
transmitted  by  Christians,  and  including  both 
Testaments.  All  the  oldest  and  most  precious 
documents  that  we  possess  belong  to  this  class. 

The  original  New  Testament  writings  which 
came  from  the  hands  of  the  apostles  and  their 
amanuenses  we  do  not  possess.  These  were 
probably  written,  not  on  skins,  but  upon  the 
papyrus  paper  commonly  used  at  that  day,  which 
was  a  frail  and  flimsy  fabric,  and  under  ordinary 
circumstances  would  soon  perish.  Fragments  of 
this  papyrus  have  come  down  to  us,  but  only 
those  which  were  preserved  with  exceptional 
care.  Jerome  tells  us  of  a  library  in  Caesarea 
that  was  partly  destroyed,  owing  to  the  crum- 
bling of  its  paper,  though  it  was  only  a  hundred 
years  old.  Parchment  was  sometimes  used  by  the 
apostles  ;  Paul  requests  Timothy,  in  his  second 
letter,  to  bring  with  him,  when  he  comes,  certain 
parchments  that  belong  to  him.  But  these  ma- 
terials were  costly,  and  it  is  not  likely  that  the  - 
apostles  used  them  to  any  extent  in  the  prepara- 
tion of  the  books  of  the  New  Testament.  At 
any  rate  the  autographic  copies  of  these  books 
disappeared  at  an  early  date.  This  seems  strange 
to  us.  Placing  the  estimate  that  we  do  upon 
these  writings,  we  should  have  taken  the  great- 
est care  to  preserve  them.     It  is  clear  that  the 

son  Smith's  The  Old  Testavient  in  the  Jewish  ChzDxh,  Lectures 
ii.  and  iii. 


NOiy  THE  BOOK'S  WERE   WRITTEN.       335 

Christians  into  whose  hands  they  fell  did  not 
value  them  as  highly  as  we  do.  As  Westcott 
says,  "They  were  given  as  a  heritage  to  miin, 
and  it  was  some  time  before  men  felt  the  full 
value  of  the  gift." 

At  the  close  of  the  second  century  there  were 
disputes  concerning  the  correct  reading  of  cer- 
tain passages,  but  neither  party  appeals  to  the 
apostolic  originals,  —  showing  that  they  must  be- 
fore that  time  have  perished.  In  after  years 
legends  were  told  about  the  preservation  of  these 
originals,  but  these  are  contradictory  and  in- 
credible. 

No  manuscript  is  now  in  existence  which  was 
written  during  the  first  three  centuries.  But  we 
have  one  or  two  that  date  back  to  the  fourth  cen- 
tury ;  and  from  that  time  through  all  the  ages  to 
the  invention  of  printing  many  copies  were  made 
of  the  Sacred  Scriptures,  in  whole  or  in  part, 
which  are  still  in  the  hands  of  scholars.  It  is 
from  these  old  Greek  manuscripts  that  our  re- 
ceived text  of  the  New  Testament  is  derived  ;  by 
a  comparison  of  them  the  scholars  of  the  seven- 
teenth century  made  up  a  Greek  New  Testa- 
ment which  they  regarded  as  approximately  ac- 
curate, and  from  that  our  English  version  was 
made. 

The  number  of  these  old  manuscripts  is  large, 
and  the  first  general  division  of  them  is  into  *'  un- 
cials "  or  "  cursives,"  as  they  are  called  ;  the  un- 
cial manuscripts  being  written  in  capital  letters. 


336  ivi/o  WROTE  THE  bible? 

the  cursives  in  small  letters  more  or  less  con- 
nected, as  in  our  written  hand.  The  uncials  are 
the  oldest,  as  they  are  the  fewest ;  there  are  only 
one  hundred  and  twenty-seven  of  them  in  all ; 
while  of  the  cursives  there  are  about  fifteen  hun- 
dred. 

Yet  most  of  these  manuscripts  are  fragmen- 
tary. Some  of  them  contain  only  the  Gospels  or 
portions  of  them  ;  some  of  them  contain  the  Acts 
and  the  Catholic  Epistles  ;  some  of  them  the 
Epistles  of  Paul  or  a  single  epistle  ;  some  are 
selections  from  the  Gospels  or  the  Epistles,  pre- 
pared to  ]De  read  in  church,  and  called  lectiona- 
ries. 

Professor  Ezra  Abbot  gives  us  a  classification 
of  these  manuscripts  which  will  be  found  in- 
structive. 

''  For  the  New  Testament,  ...  we  have  man- 
uscripts more  or  less  complete,  written  in  uncial 
or  capital  letters,  and  ranging  from  the  fourth  to 
the  tenth  century  ;  of  the  Gospels  twenty-seven, 
besides  thirty  small  fragments ;  of  the  Acts  and 
Catholic  Epistles  ten,  besides  six  small  fragments  ; 
of  the  Pauline  Epistles  eleven,  besides  nine  small 
fragments,  and  of  the  Revelation  five.  All  of 
these  have  been  most  thoroughly  collated,  and 
the  text  of  the  most  important  of  them  has  been 
published.  One  of  these  manuscripts,  the  Si- 
naitic,  containing  the  whole  of  the  New  Testa- 
ment, and  another,  the  Vatican,  containing  much 
the  larger  part  of  it,  were  written  probably  as 


NO IV   THE   BOOK'S  WERE   WRITTEN.       337 

early  as  the  niiddle  of  the  fourth  century  ;  two 
others,  the  Alexandrian  and  the  Ephracm,  be- 
long to  about  the  middle  of  the  fifth,  of  which 
date  are  two  more,  containing  considerable  por- 
tions of  the  Gospels.  A  very  remarkable  manu- 
script of  the  Gospels  and  Acts  —  the  Cambridge 
manuscript,  or  Codex  Bezae  —  belongs  to  the 
sixth  century.  ...  I  pass  by  a  number  of  small 
but  valuable  fragments  of  the  fifth  and  sixth  cen- 
turies. As  to  the  cursive  manuscripts  ranging 
from  the  tenth  century  to  the  sixteenth,  we  have 
of  the  Gospels  more  than  six  hundred  ;  of  the 
Acts  over  two  hundred  ;  of  the  Pauline  Epistles 
nearly  three  hundred  ;  of  the  Revelation  about 
one  hundred,  —  not  reckoning  the  lectionaries.  or 
manuscripts  containing  the  lessons  from  the 
Gospels,  Acts,  and  Epistles,  read  in  the  service  of 
the  church,  of  which  there  are  more  than  four 
hundred."  1 

Out  of  all  this  vast  mass  of  extant  manuscripts, 
only  twenty-seven  contain  the  New  Testament 
entire. 

The  three  oldest  and  most  valuable  manuscripts 
among  those  named  by  Professor  Abbot,  in  the 
passage  above,  are  the  Sinaitic,  the  Vatican,  and 
the  Alexandrian  manuscripts. 

Of  these  old  Bibles  perhaps  the  oldest  is  the 
one  in  the  Vatican  Library  at  Rome.  It  was  en- 
rolled in  that  library  as  late  as  the  year  1475  \ 
what  its  history  was  before  that  time  is  unknown. 

1  A}iglo-American  Bible  Revision,  p.  95. 


338  WHO  WROTE  the  bible? 

By  whose  hands  or  at  what  place  it  was  written, 
no  one  can  tell.  Some  have  supposed  that  it 
was  brought  from  Constantinople  to  Rome,  in  the 
fifteenth  century,  by  John  Bessarion,  a  learned 
patriarch  ;  some  that  it  was  written  in  Alexan- 
dria, when  that  city  was  the  metropolis  of  the 
world's  culture  ;  some  that  it  was  produced  in 
Southern  Italy  when  that  region  was  celebrated 
for  its  learning.  The  signs  favor  the  latter  the- 
ory. The  form  of  the  letters  is  like  those  found 
on  papyri  in  Herculaneum ;  and  other  manu- 
scripts of  the  Bible  found  in  southern  Italy  agree 
remarkably  with  this  one  in  many  peculiar  read- 
ings. But  this  is  all  guess  -  work.  Nobody 
knows  where  the  old  Bible  came  from  or  who 
brought  it  to  Rome. 

Some  things,  however,  the  old  book  plainly 
tells  us  about  its  own  history.  It  bears  the  un- 
mistakable marks  of  great  antiquity.  The  scholar 
who  is  familiar  with  old  Greek  manuscripts  can 
judge  by  looking  at  a  document  something  about 
its  probable  age.  By  the  form  of  the  letters,  by 
the  presence  or  absence  of  certain  marks  of  punc- 
tuation, by  the  general  style  of  the  manuscript, 
he  can  determine  within  a  century  or  so  the  date 
at  which  it  was  written. 

This  old  Bible  is  written  in  the  uncial  or  cap- 
ital letters  ;  this  would  make  it  tolerably  certain 
that  it  must  be  older  than  the  tenth  century. 
We  have  scarcely  any  uncial  manuscripts  later 
than  the  tenth  century.     But  other  unmistakable 


I/O  IV   THE   BOOKS  WERE   WRITTEN.       339 

marks  take  it  back  much  farther  than  this.     The 
words  arc  written  continuously,  with  no  breaks 
or  spaces   between   them  ;  there  are  no  accents, 
no  rough  or  smooth  breathings,  no  punctuation 
marks  of  any  sort.     These  are  signs  of  great  age. 
Another  peculiarity  is  the  manner  of  the  division 
of  the  books  into  sections.     I  cannot  stop  to  de- 
scribe to   you  the  various    methods  of    division 
adopted    in   antiquity.     The    present    separation 
into  chapters  and    verses  was,  as   you   know,  a 
quite  modern  device.     But  the  divisions  of  this 
old  Bible  follow  a  method  that  we  know  to  have 
been  in  use  at  a  very  early  day  ;  and  the  conclu- 
sion of  all  the  scholars  is  that  it  must  have  been 
written  as  early  as  the  year  350,  possibly  as  early 

as  300. 

It  is  not,  however,  a  roll,  but  a  book  in  form 
like  those  we  handle  every  day.  Before  this 
date  manuscripts  were  generally  prepared  in  this 
way.  Martial,  the  Latin  poet,  who  died  about 
100,  mentions  as  a  novelty  in  his  day  books  with 
square  leaves,  bound  together  at  the  edges. 

The  Vatican  Bible  is  a  heavy  quarto,  the  cov- 
ers are  red  morocco  discolored  with  age,  the 
leaves,  of  which  there  are  759,  are  of  fine  and 
delicate  vellum.  It  contains  the  Septuagint 
translation  of  the  Old  Testament,  except  the 
first  forty-five  chapters  in  Genesis  and  a  few  of 
the  Psalms,  which  have  been  torn  out  and  lost. 
Of  the  New  Testament  writings,  the  last  five 
chapters  of  Hebrews,  First  and  Second  Timothy, 


340  IV//0    WROTE    THE  BIBLE? 

Titus,  Philemon,  and  the  Apocalypse  are  wanting. 
Otherwise  both  Testaments  are  complete. 

We  may  recall  another  fact,  to  which  allusion 
has  been  made,  that  this  old  Bible  contains 
among  the  Old  Testament  books  those  books 
which  we  now  call  apocryphal,  and  that  these 
apocryphal  books,  instead  of  being  divided  from 
the  rest  in  a  separate  group,  are  mingled  with 
them,  the  oj'dcr  of  the  books  being  quite  unlike 
that  of  our  Bibles  or  of  the  Hebrew  canon.  The 
apocryphal  First  Book  of  Esdras  precedes  our 
Book  of  Fzra  ;  while  our  Book  of  Ezra  is  united 
with  Nehemiah,  forming  the  Second  Book  of  Es- 
dras. Judith  and  Tobit  follow  Esther,  and  next 
comes  the  twelve  .minor  prophets,  and  so  on. 

The  same  thing  is  true  of  all  these  oldest  Bi- 
bles ;  they  all  contain  the  apocryphal  books,  and 
these  books  are  mingled  with  the  other  books, 
either  promiscuously,  or  by  some  system  of  classi- 
fication which  accepts  them  as  equal  in  value 
with  the  other  Old  Testament  writings.  There 
is  no  indication  in  these  old  Bibles  that  the 
apocryphal  books  are  any  less  sacred  or  authori- 
tative than  the  others. 

Another  manuscript  Bible,  scarcely  less  vener- 
able and  no  less  precious  than  the  Vatican  Bible, 
is  the  one  known  as  the  Sinaitic  manuscript. 
This  was  discovered  by  Constantine  Tischendorf, 
a  German  scholar,  in  an  ancient  convent  at  the 
base  of  Mount  Sinai.  The  first  journey  of  Tisch- 
endorf to  the  Sinaitic  peninsula  was  undertaken 


I/OJV   THE  BOOKS  WERE   WRITTEN.       34I 

in  1S44,  ^<^^  the  express  purpose  of  searching  in 
the  old  monasteries  of  this  neighborhood  for  an- 
cient copies  of  the  Scriptures  that  might  be  pre- 
served in  them.  The  monks  of  this  old  convent 
admitted  him  to  their  ancient  library,  —  a  place 
not  greatly  frequented  by  them, — and  there  in 
the  middle  of  the  room  he  found  a  waste  basket, 
filled  with  leaves  and  torn  pieces  of  old  parch- 
ment gathered  to  be  burned.  In  looking  them 
over  he  discovered  one  hundred  and  twenty 
leaves  of  a  Bible  that  seemed  to  him  of  great 
antiquity.  He  asked  for  these  leaves,  but  when 
they  found  that  he  wanted  them,  the  monks  be- 
gan to  suspect  their  value,  and  permitted  him  to 
take  only  forty-three  of  them.  In  1853  he  re- 
turned again,  but  this  time  could  not  find  the 
rest  of  the  precious  manuscript.  He  feared  that 
it  had  been  destroyed  long  before,  but  this  was 
not  the  case.  Stimulated  by  his  desire  to  pos- 
sess the  loose  leaves,  the  monks  had  made  search 
for  the  rest  of  the  volume,  and,  using  as  samples 
the  leaves  they  had  refused  to  give  him,  they 
had  found  them  all  and  secreted  them.  Upon 
his  second  visit  they  did  not  show  him  the  book, 
however,  nor  reveal  to  him  in  any  way  its  exist- 
ence. 

Six  years  later,  in  1859,  he  returned  again,  this 
time  fortified  with  a  letter  from  the  Emperor  of 
Russia,  the  head  of  the  Greek  Church  ;  and  this 
mighty  document  made  the  monks  open  their 
treasures  for  his  inspection.     He   obtained  per- 


342  W//0    WROTE    THE  BIBLE? 

mission,  first,  to  carry  the  old  Bible  to  Cairo  to  be 
copied,  and  finally,  under  the  imperial  influence, 
the  monks  surrendered  it,  and  suffered  it  to  be 
removed  to  St.  Petersburg,  where  since  1859  it 
has  been  sacredly  kept. 

"  The  Sinai  Bible,"  says  Dr.  F.  P.  Woodbury, 
"  contains  the  New  Testament,  the  Epistle  of 
Barnabas,  a  portion  of  the  Shepherd  of  Hermas, 
and  twenty-two  books  of  the  Old  Testament. 
The  whole  is  written  on  fine  vellum  made  from 
antelope  skins  into  the  largest  pages  known  in 
our  ancient  manuscripts.  While  most  of  the  old- 
est manuscripts  have  only  three  columns  to  the 
page,  and  the  Vatican  Bible  has  three,  the  Sinai 
Bible  alone  shows  four.  The  letters  are  some- 
what larger  than  those  of  the  Vatican  and  much 
more  roughly  written.  The  book  contains  many 
blunders  in  copying,  and  there  are  a  few  cases  of 
willful  omission.  Its  remote  age  is  attested  by 
many  of  the  same  proofs  that  have  been  men- 
tioned in  the  description  of  the  Vatican  Bible."  ^ 

It  is  known  that  the  Emperor  Constantine,  in 
the  year  331,  authorized  the  preparation  of  fifty 
costly  and  beautiful  copies  of  the  Holy  Scrip- 
tures under  the  care  of  Eusebius  of  Caesarea. 
Tischendorf  himself  thinks  —  and  his  conjecture 
is  accepted  by  other  scholars  —  that  this  is  one 
of  those  fifty  Bibles,  and  that  it  was  sent  from 
Byzantium  to  the  monks  of  this  convent  by  the 

1  From  an  interesting  sketch  of  "  Three  Old  Bibles,"  in  Sun- 
day Afiernoo?i,  vol.  i.  pp.  65-71. 


JIO]V  THE   BOOKS  WERE  WRITTEN.       343 

Emperor  Justinian,  who  was  its  founder.  At  all 
events,  it  is  incontestably  a  manuscript  of  great 
age,  certainly  of  the  fourth  century,  and  probably 
of  the  first  half  of  that  century. 

The  other  great  Bible  is  the  one  known  as 
the  Alexandrian,  which  was  presented,  in  1628, 
to  King  Charles  I.  of  England  by  Cyril  Lucar, 
patriarch  of  Constantinople,  who  had  brought  it 
from  Alexandria.  It  was  transferred  in  1753 
from  the  king's  private  library  to  the  British 
Museum,  where  it  is  now  preserved.  It  is  bound 
in  four  folio  volumes,  three  of  which  contain  the 
text  of  the  Old  and  one  of  the  New  Testament. 
The  portion  which  contains  the  Old  Testament 
is  more  perfect  than  that  which  contains  the 
New,  quite  a  number  of  leaves  having  been  lost 
from  the  latter.  "  The  material  of  which  this 
volume  is  composed  is  thin  vellum,  the  page 
being  about  thirteen  inches  high  by  ten  broad, 
containing  from  fifty  to  fifty-two  lines  on  each 
page,  each  line  consisting  of  about  twenty  letters. 
The  number  of  pages  is  773,  of  which  640  are 
occupied  with  the  text  of  the  Old  Testament  and 
133  with  the  New.  The  characters  are  uncial, 
but  larger  than  the  Vatican  manuscript.  There 
are  no  accents  or  breathings,  no  spaces  between 
the  letters  or  words  save  at  the  end  of  a  para- 
graph, and  the  contractions,  which  are  not  nu- 
merous, are  only  such  as  are  found  in  the  oldest 
manuscripts.  The  punctuation  consists  of  a 
point  placed  at  the  end  of  a  sentence,  usually  on 


344  ^^^    WROTE    THE  BIBLE? 

a  level  with  the  top  of  the  preceding  letter."^ 
The  general  verdict  of  scholars  is  that  this  manu- 
script belongs  to  about  the  middle  of  the  fifth 
century. 

The  contents  of  this  old  Bible  are  curious,  and 
they  are  curiously  arranged.  The  first  volume 
contains  the  Pentateuch,  Joshua,  Judges,  Ruth, 
the  two  books  of  Samuel,  the  two  books  of  Kings, 
and  the  two  books  of  Chronicles.  The  second 
contains,  first,  the  twelve  minor  prophets  (from 
Hosea  to  Malachi),  then  Isaiah,  Jeremiah,  Baruch, 
Lamentations,  The  Epistle  of  JeremiaJi^  Ezekiel, 
Daniel,  Esther,  Tobit,  yudith,  Esdras  I.  (the 
apocryphal  Esdras),  Esdras  11.  (including  our 
Nehemiah  and  part  of  our  Ezra),  and  the  four 
books  of  the  Maccabees.  The  third  volume  con- 
tains An  Epistle  of  Athanasius  to  Marcellenus 
on  the  Psalms ;  The  Hypothesis  of  Eusebius  on 
the  Psalms  ;  then  the  Book  of  the  Psalms,  of 
which  there  are  one  hundred  and  fifty-one,  and 
fifteen  Hymns ;  then  Job,  Proverbs,  Ecclesiastes, 
Canticles,  Wisdom  of  Solomon,  and  Ecclesiasti- 
cus,  or  Sirach.  The  fourth  volume  contains  the 
four  Gospels,  the  Acts,  the  seven  Catholic  Epis- 
tles (one  of  James,  two  of  Peter,  three  of  John, 
and  one  of  Jude),  fourteen  Epistles  of  Paul  (in- 
cluding the  one  to  the  Hebrews),  The  Revelation 
of  John,  two  Epistles  of  Clement  to  the  Corin- 
thians, and  eight  Psalms  of  Solomon. 

This,  it  will  be  admitted,  is  a  generous  Bible. 

1  Encyc.  Brit.,  i.  p.  496. 


HOW  THE  BOOK'S  WERE  WRITTEN.       345 

It  contains  most  of  the  apocryphal  books,  and 
several  others  that  we  do  not  find  in  the  other 
collections.  It  is  probable  that  the  works  of 
Athanasius  and  Eusebius  on  the  Psalms  were 
admitted  rather  as  introduction  or  commentary 
than  as  text  ;  but  the  rest,  judging  from  the  posi- 
tions in  which  they  stand,  must  have  been  re- 
garded as  Sacred  Scriptures. 

These,  then,  are  the  three  oldest,  most  com- 
plete, and  most  trustworthy  copies  of  the  Sacred 
Scriptures  now  in  existence.  By  all  scholars 
they  are  regarded  as  precious  beyond  price  ;  and 
any  reading  in  which  they  agree  would  probably 
be  regarded  as  the  right  reading,  if  all  the  other 
manuscripts  in  the  world  were  against  them. 

I  have  suggested  that  these  old  manuscripts 
do  not  always  agree.  The  fact  is  that  no  two  of 
them  are  exactly  alike,  and  that  there  are  a  great 
many  slight  differences  between  those  which  are 
most  closely  assimilated.  Of  these  differences 
Professor  Westcott  says  that  "  there  cannot  be 
less  than  120,000,  —  though  of  these  a  very  large 
proportion  consists  of  differences  of  spelling  and 
isolated  aberrations  of  scribes."  It  is  not  gen- 
erally difficult  for  the  student  on  comparing  them 
to  tell  which  is  the  right  reading.  A  word  may 
be  misspelled,  for  example,  in  several  different 
ways  ;  the  student  knows  the  right  way  to  spell 
it,  and  is  not  in  doubt  concerning  the  word. 
"  Probably,"  says  Mr.  Westcott,  "  there  are  not 
more  than  from  sixteen  hundred  to  two  thousand 


346  lVI/0    WROTE    THE  BIBLE? 

places  in  which  the  true  reading  is  a  matter  of 
uncertainty,  even  if  we  include  in  this  questions 
of  order,  inflection,  and  orthography  ;  the  doubt- 
ful readings  by  which  the  sense  is  in  any  way 
affected  are  very  much  fewer,  and  those  of  dog- 
matic importance  can  be  easily  numbered." 

The  ways  in  which  these  errors  and  variations 
arose  are  easily  explained.  The  men  who  copied 
these  manuscripts  were  careful  men,  many  of 
them,  but  all  of  them  were  fallible.  Sometimes 
they  would  mistake  a  letter  for  another  letter 
much  like  it,  and  change  the  form  of  a  word  in 
that  way ;  sometimes  there  would  be  two  clauses 
of  a  sentence  ending  with  the  same  word,  and  the 
eye  of  the  copyist,  glancing  back  to  the  manu- 
script after  writing  the  first  of  these  words,  would 
alight  upon  the  second  one,  and  go  on  from  that ; 
so  that  the  clause  preceding  it  would  be  omitted. 
Sometimes  in  copying  the  continuous  writing  of 
the  uncial  manuscripts,  mistakes  would  be  made 
in  dividing  words.  For  example,  if  a  number  of 
English  words,  written  in  close  order,  with  no 
spaces  between  them,  were  given  you  to  copy, 
and  you  found  "  infancy,"  you  might  make  two 
words  of  it  or  one  ;  and  if  you  were  a  little  care- 
less you  might  write  it  "  in  fancy  "  when  it  should 
be  "  infancy,"  or  vice  versa.  A  case  might  arise 
in  which  it  would  be  difficult  for  you  to  tell 
whether  it  should  be  "  in  fancy  "  or  "infancy." 
Such  uncertainties  the  copyists  encountered,  and 
such  mistakes  they  sometimes  made. 


I/O  IV   THE  BOOK'S  WERE   WRITTEN.       347 

Mistakes  of  memory  tliey  also  made  in  copy- 
m^,  just  as  I  sometimes  do  when  I  undertake  to 
copy  a  passage  from  Mr.  Westcott  or  Mr.  David- 
son into  one  of  these  chapters.  I  look  upon  the 
book,  and  take  a  sentence  in  my  mind,  but  per- 
haps while  1  am  writing  it  down  I  will  change 
slightly  the  order  of  the  words,  or  it  may  be  put 
a  word  of  my  own  in  the  place  of  another  that 
much  resembles  it,  as  "  but  "  for  "  though,"  or 
"  from  "  for  "  out  of,"  or  "  doubtless  "  for  "  without 
doubt."  I  try  to  copy  very  exactly,  but  there  are, 
unquestionably,  now  and  then  such  slips  as  these 
in  my  quotations.  And  such  mistakes  were  made 
by  the  copyists  of  the  Old  Scriptures. 

There  are  some  instances  of  intentional  changes. 
Sometimes  a  copyist  evidently  substituted  a  word 
that  he  thought  was  plainer  for  one  that  was  more 
obscure  ;  a  more  elegant  word  for  one  less  ele- 
gant ;  a  grammatical  construction  for  one  that 
was  not  grammatical. 

Other  differences  have  arisen  from  the  habit 
of  some  of  the  copyists  or  owners  of  manuscripts 
of  writing  glosses,  or  brief  explanatory  notes,  on 
the  margin.  Some  of  these  marginalia  were 
copied  by  subsequent  scribes  into  the  text,  where, 
in  our  version,  they  still  remain.  Some  of  them, 
however,  were  removed  in  the  late  revision. 

The  great  majority  of  these  errors  are,  how- 
ever, as  I  have  said,  extremely  unimportant  ;  and 
nearly  all  of  them  seem  to  have  arisen  in  the 
ways  I  have  suggested,  —  through  simple  care- 


348  ^VIIO    WROTE    THE  BIBLE? 

Icssness,  and   not  with   any  intent  of  corrupting 
the  text. 

The  translations  of  the  Bible  which  were  made 
in  early  days  into  other  languages  than  our  own 
must  be  dismissed  with  the  briefest  mention. 
The  most  important  version  of  the  Old  Testa- 
ment was  the  Septuagint,  of  which  nothing  more 
needs  to  be  said. 

You  will  remember  that  the  Hebrew  was  a 
dead  language  while  our  Lord  was  on  the  earth, 
the  Jews  of  Palestine  speaking  the  Aramaic.  For 
their  use,  translations  of  the  Hebrew  into  the 
Aramaic,  called  Targums,  were  made.  There  is 
a  great  variety  of  these,  and  there  are  many  opin- 
ions about  their  age  ;  but  it  is  not  likely  that  the 
oldest  of  them  was  committed  to  writing  before 
the  second  century  a.  d.  They  are  curious  speci- 
mens of  the  translator's  work,  combining  text 
and  commentary  in  a  remarkable  manner.  Ad- 
ditions and  changes  are  freely  made  ;  the  simple 
sentences  of  the  old  record  are  greatly  expanded  ; 
not  only  is  a  spade  generally  called  a  useful  lig- 
neous and  ferruginous  agricultural  implement, 
but  many  things  are  said  concerning  the  afore- 
said spade  which  Moses  or  David  or  Isaiah  never 
dreamed  of  saying. 

For  example,  in  Judges  v.  lO,  the  Hebrew  is 
literally  translated  in  our  English  Bible  thus  : 
"  Speak,  ye  that  ride  on  white  asses,  ye  that  sit 
in  judgment  and  walk  by  the  way."     The  Tar- 


I/OJV   THE  BOOK'S  WERE   WRITTIIN.       349 

gum  of  Jonathan  expatiates  thereon  as  follows  : 
*'  Those  who  had  interrupted  their  occupations 
are  riding  on  asses  covered  with  many  colored 
caparisons,  and  they  ride  about  freely  in  all  the 
territory  of  Israel,  and  congregate  to  sit  in  judg- 
ment. They  walk  in  their  old  ways,  and  are 
speaking  of  the  power  Thou  hast  shown  in  the 
land  of  Israel,"  etc.  This  may  be  pronounced  a 
remarkably  free  translation  ;  and  the  Targums 
generally  evince  a  similar  liberality  of  sentiment 
and  phraseology. 

Besides  these,  the  ancient  translations  of  the 
Bible,  which  must  be  mentioned,  are  the  Old 
Latin,  made  in  the  second  century,  out  of  which, 
by  many  revisions,  grew  that  Latin  Vulgate  which 
is  now  used  in  the  Catholic  ritual  ;  an  ancient 
Syriac  version  of  about  the  same  age ;  two 
Egyptian  versions,  in  different  dialects,  made  in 
the  third  century  ;  the  Peshito-Syriac,  the  Gothic, 
and  the  Ethiopic  in  the  fourth,  and  the  Armenian 
in  the  fifth  ;  besides  several  later  translations, 
including  the  Arabic  and  the  Slavonic.  These 
ancient  translations  are  all  of  value  to  modern 
scholars  in  helping  them  to  reach  more  certain 
conclusions  respecting  the  nature  of  the  Sacred 
Scriptures  and  the  right  reading  in  disputed 
passages. 

The  ages  which  we  have  been  traversing  in  this 
chapter  —  when  the  Bible  was  a  manuscript  — 
were  ages  of  great  darkness.  The  copies  of  the 
book   were  few,  and  the  common   people   could 


350  IV no  WROTE  the  bible? 

neither  possess  them  nor  read  them.  It  is  hard 
for  us  who  have  had  the  book  in  our  hands  from 
our  infancy,  who  have  gone  to  it  so  freely  for 
light  in  darkness,  for  comfort  in  sorrow,  for  wis- 
dom to  work  with,  for  weapons  to  fight  with,  to 
understand  how  men  could  have  lived  the  life  of 
faith  without  it ;  how  a  godly  seed  could  have 
been  nourished  in  the  earth  without  the  sincere 
milk  of  the  word  for  them  to  feed  on. 

It  was  indeed  a  great  privation  that  they  suf- 
fered, but  we  must  not  suppose  that  they  were 
left  without  witness.  For  there  is  another  and 
even  a  clearer  revelation  than  the  written  word, 
and  that  is  a  godly  life.  Godly  lives  there  were 
in  all  these  dark  times ;  and  it  was  at  their  fires 
that  the  torch  of  gospel  truth  was  kindled  and 
kept  burning.  There  may  be  reason  for  a  ques- 
tion whether  we  have  not  come  to  trust  in  these 
times  too  much  in  a  word  that  is  written,  and  to 
undervalue  that  other  revelation  which  God  is 
making  of  his  truth  and  love  in  the  characters 
of  his  children.  For  it  is  only  in  the  hght  that 
Christ  is  constantly  manifesting  to  the  world  in 
the  lives  of  men  that  we  can  see  any  meaning  in 
the  words  of  the  book.  "  The  Christian,"  says 
Dr.  Christlieb,  "is  the  world's  Bible."  This  is 
the  word  that  is  known  and  read  of  men.  Let  it 
be  our  care  to  make  it,  not  an  infallible,  but  a 
clear,  an  adequate,  and  a  safe  revelation  of  the 
truth  and  love  of  God  to  men. 


CHAPTER  XIII. 

HOW    MUCH    IS    THE    BIBLE    WORTH  ? 

Of  the  Bible  as  a  book  among  books,  of  the 
human  elements  which  enter  into  its  composi- 
tion, some  account  has  been  given  in  the  preced- 
ing chapters.  But  in  these  studies  the  whole 
story  of  the  Bible  has  not  been  told.  There  is 
need,  therefore,  that  we  should  enlarge  our  view 
somewhat,  and  take  more  directly  into  account 
certain  elements  with  which  we  have  not  hitherto 
been  chiefly  concerned. 

Our  study  has,  indeed,  made  a  few  things  plain. 
Among  them  is  the  certainty  that  the  Bible  is 
not  an  infallible  Book,  in  the  sense  in  which  it  is 
popularly  supposed  to  be  infallible.  When  we 
study  the  history  of  the  several  books,  the  his- 
tory of  the  canon,  the  history  of  the  distribution 
and  reproduction  of  the  manuscript  copies,  and 
the  history  of  the  versions,  —  when  we  discover 
that  the  '* various  readings"  of  the  differing 
manuscripts  amount  to  one  hundred  and  fifty  thou- 
sand, the  impossibility  of  maintaining  the  verbal 
inerrancy  of  the  Bible  becomes  evident.  We  see 
how  human  ignorance  and  error  have  been  suf- 
fered to  mingle  with  this  stream  of  living  water 


352  WHO    WROTE    THE  BIBLE? 

throughout  all  its  course  ;  if  our  assurance  of 
salvation  were  made  to  depend  upon  our  know- 
ledge that  every  word  of  the  Bible  was  of  divine 
origin,  our  hopes  of  eternal  life  would  be  alto- 
gether insecure. 

The  book  is  not  infallible  historically.  It  is  a 
veracious  record  ;  we  may  depend  upon  the  truth- 
fulness of  the  outline  which  it  gives  us  of  the  his- 
tory of  the  Jewish  people ;  but  the  discrepancies 
and  contradictions  which  appear  here  and  there 
upon  its  pages  show  that  its  writers  were  not 
miraculously  protected  from  mistakes  in  dates 
and  numbers  and  the  order  of  events. 

It  is  not  infallible  scientifically.  It  is  idle  to 
try  to  force  the  narrative  of  Genesis  into  an  exact 
correspondence  with  geological  science.  It  is 
a  hymn  of  creation,  wonderfully  beautiful  and 
pure  ;  the  central  truths  of  monotheistic  religion 
and  of  modern  science  are  involved  in  it ;  but  it 
is  not  intended  to  give  us  the  scientific  history 
of  creation,  and  the  attempt"  to  make  it  bear  this 
construction  is  highly  injudicious. 

It  is  not  infallible  morally.  By  this  I  mean 
that  portions  of  this  revelation  involve  an  imper- 
fect morality.  Many  things  are  here  commanded 
which  it  would  be  wrong  for  us  to  do.  This  is 
not  saying  that  these  commands  were  not  divinely 
wise  for  the  people  to  whom  they  were  given  ; 
nor  is  it  denying  that  the  morality  of  the  New 
Testament,  which  is  the  fulfillment  and  consum- 
mation  of   the  moral  progress  which    the    book 


HO IV  MUCH  IS   THE  BIBLE  WORTH?       353 

records,  is  a  perfect  morality  ;  it  is  simply  assert- 
ing that  the  stages  of  this  progress  from  a  lower 
to  a  higher  morality  arc  here  clearly  marked  ; 
that  the  standards  of  the  earlier  time  are  there- 
fore inadequate  and  misleading  in  these  later 
times  ;  and  that  any  man  who  accepts  the  Bible 
as  a  code  of  moral  rules,  all  of  which  are  equally 
binding,  will  be  led  into  the  gravest  errors.  It 
is  no  more  true  that  the  ceremonial  legislation  of 
the  Old  Testament  is  obsolete  than  that  large 
portions  of  the  moral  legislation  are  obsolete. 
The  notions  of  the  writers  of  these  books  con- 
cerning their  duties  to  God  were  dim  and  imper- 
fect; so  were  their  notions  concerning  their  duties 
to  man.  All  the  truth  that  they  could  receive 
was  given  to  them  ;  but  there  were  many  truths 
which  they  could  not  receive,  which  to  us  are  as 
plain  as  the  daylight. 

Not  to  recognize  the  partialness  and  imperfec- 
tion of  this  record  in  all  these  respects  is  to  be 
guilty  of  a  grave  disloyalty  to  the  kingdom  of  the 
truth.  With  all  these  facts  staring  him  in  the 
face,  the  attempt  of  any  intelligent  man  to  main- 
tain the  theoretical  and  ideal  infallibility  of  all 
parts  of  these  writings  is  a  criminal  blunder. 
Nor  is  there  any  use  in  loudly  asserting  the  in- 
errancy of  these  books,  with  vehement  denuncia- 
tions of  all  who  call  it  in  question,  and  then  in  a 
breath  admitting  that  there  may  be  some  errors 
and  discrepancies  and  interpolations.  Perfection 
is  perfection.     To  stoutly  afRrm  that  a  thing  is 


354  ^^O    WROTE    THE  BIBLE? 

perfect,  and  then  admit  that  it  may  be  in  some 
respects  imperfect,  is  an  insensate  procedure. 
Infallibility  is  infallibility.  The  Scriptures  are, 
or  the)^  are  not,  infallible.  The  admission  that 
there  may  be  a  few  errors  gives  every  man  the 
right,  nay  it  lays  upon  him  the  duty,  of  finding 
what  those  errors  are.  Our  friends  who  so  stur- 
dily assert  the  traditional  theory  can  hardly  be 
aware  of  the  extent  to  which  they  stultify  them- 
selves when  their  sweeping  and  reiterated  asser- 
tion that  the  Bible  can  never  contain  a  mistake  is 
followed,  as  it  always  must  be,  by  their  timid  and 
deprecatory,  "  hardly  ever."  The  old  rabbinical 
theory,  as  adopted  and  extended  by  some  of  the 
post-Reformation  theologians,  that  the  Bible  was 
verbally  dictated  by  God  and  is  absolutely  accu- 
rate in  every  word,  letter,  and  vowel-point,  and 
that  it  is  therefore  blasphemy  to  raise  a  question 
concerning  any  part  of  it,  is  a  consistent  theory. 
Between  this  and  a  free  but  reverent  inquiry  into 
the  Bible  itself,  to  discover  what  human  elements 
it  contains  and  how  it  is  affected  by  them,  there 
is  no  middle  ground.  That  it  is  useless  and  mis- 
chievous to  make  for  the  Bible  claims  that  it  no- 
where makes  for  itself, — to  hold  and  teach  a 
theory  concerning  it  which  at  once  breaks  down 
when  an  intelligent  man  begins  to  study  it  with 
open  mind  —  is  beginning  to  be  very  plain.  The 
quibbling,  the  concealment,  the  disingenuousness 
which  this  method  of  using  the  Bible  involves 
are  not  conducive  to  Christian  integrity.     This 


//oir  MUCH  IS  the  luni.E  worth?     355 

kind  of  "lying  for  God  "  has  driven  hundreds  of 
thousands  already  into  irreconcilable  alienation 
from  the  Christian  church.  It  is  time  to  stop  it. 
How  did  this  theory  of  the  infallibility  of  the 
Bible  arise  ?  Those  who  have  followed  these 
discussions  to  this  point  know  that  it  has  not  al- 
ways been  held  by  the  Christian  church.  The 
history  of  the  canon,  told  with  any  measure  of 
truthfulness,  will  make  this  plain.  The  history 
of  the  variations  between  the  Septuagint  and  the 
Hebrew  shows,  beyond  the  shadow  of  a  doubt, 
that  this  theory  of  the  unchangeable  and  absolute 
divinity  of  the  words  of  the  Scripture  had  no 
practical  hold  upon  transcribers  and  copyists  in 
the  early  Jewish  church.  The  New  Testament 
writers  could  not  have  consistently  held  such  a 
theory  respecting  the  Old  Testament  books,  else 
they  would  not  have  quoted  them,  as  they  did, 
with  small  care  for  verbal  accuracy.  They  be- 
lieved them  to  be  substantially  true,  and  there- 
fore they  give  the  substance  of  them  in  their 
quotations  ;  but  there  is  no  such  slavish  atten- 
tion to  the  letter  as  there  must  have  been  if  they 
had  regarded  them  as  verbally  dictated  by  God 
himself.  The  Christian  Fathers  were  inclined, 
no  doubt,  to  accept  the  rabbinical  theories  of 
inspiration  respecting  the  Old  Testament  ;  but 
they  sometimes  avoid  the  difficulties  growing  out 
of  manifest  errors  in  the  text  by  a  theory  of  an 
inner  sense  which  is  faultless,  frankly  admitting 
that  the  natural  meaning  cannot  always  be  de- 


356  IVI/O    WROTE    THE  BIBLE? 

fended.  As  to  the  early  Reformers,  we  have 
seen  how  freely  they  handled  the  Sacred  Writ- 
ings, submitting  them  to  a  scrutiny  which  they 
would  not  have  ventured  upon  if  they  had  be- 
lieved concerning  them  what  we  have  been 
taught.  It  was  not  until  the  period  succeeding 
the  Reformation  that  this  dogma  of  Biblical  In- 
fallibility was  clearly  formulated  and  imposed 
upon  the  Protestant  churches.  As  taught  by 
Ouenstcdt  and  Voetius  and  Calovius,  the  dogma 
asserts  that  "  not  only  the  substance  of  truth  and 
the  views  proposed  in  their  minutest  detail,  but 
even  the  identical  words,  all  and  in  particular, 
were  supplied  and  dictated  by  the  Holy  Ghost. 
Not  a  word  is  contained  in  the  Holy  Scriptures 
which  is  not  in  the  strictest  sense  inspired,  the 
very  interpunctuation  not  excepted.  .  .  .  Errors 
of  any  sort  whatever,  even  verbal  or  grammati- 
cal, as  well  as  all  inelegancies  of  style,  are  to  be 
denied  as  unworthy  of  the  Divine  Spirit  who  is 
throughout  the  primary  author  of  the  Bible."  ^ 
This  view  was  long  maintained  with  all  strict- 
ness, and  many  a  man  has  been  made  a  heretic 
for  denying  it.  Within  the  last  century  the 
form  of  the  doctrine  has  been  somewhat  modified 
by  theologians,  yet  the  substance  of  it  is  still 
regarded  as  essential  orthodoxy.  Dr.  Charles 
Hodge,  in  his  "Theology,"  vol.  i.  p.  152,  says, 
*'  Protestants  hold  that  the  Scriptures  of  the  Old 
and  New  Testaments  are  the  word  of  God,  writ- 

1   The  Doctrine  of  Sacred  Scripture,  ii.  p.  209. 


I 


NOW  MUCH  JS   THE  BIBLE  WORTH?       357 

ten  under  the  inspiration  of  God  the  Holy 
Ghost,  and  are  therefore  infallible,  and  conse- 
quently free  from  all  error,  whether  of  doctrine, 
of  fact,  or  of  precept."  And  again  (p.  163),  "All 
the  books  of  Scripture  are  equally  inspired.  All 
alike  are  infallible  in  what  they  teach."  Such  is 
the  doctrine  now  held  by  the  great  majority  of 
Christians.  Intelligent  pastors  do  not  hold  it,  but 
the  body  of  the  laity  have  no  other  conception. 

Whence  is  it  derived  ?  Where  do  the  teachers 
quoted  above  get  their  authority  for  their  affir- 
mations ?  / 

Not,  as  we  have  seen,  from  any  statements  of    (• 
the  Bible  itself.     There  is  not  one  word  in  the 
Bible  which  affirms  or  implies  that  this  character 
of  inerrancy  attaches   to  the  entire  collection  of 
writings,  or  to  any  one  of  them. 

The  doctrine  arose,  as  I  have  said,  in  the  sev-     ^ 
enteenth  century,  and  it  was  in  part,  no  doubt,  a     / 
reflection  of  the   teaching  of  the  later  rabbins, 
whose  fantastic  notions  about  the  origin  of  their 
sacred   books  I  have  before  alluded  to.     It  was 
also  developed,  as  a  polemical  necessity,  in  the| 
exigencies  of  that  conflict  with  the  Roman  Cath- 
olic theoloirians  which  followed  the  Reformation. 
The  eminent  German  scholar  and  saint.  Professor 
Tholuck,  gives  the  following  account  of  its  origin  : 

"  In  proportion  as  controversy,  sharpened  by 
Jesuitism,  made  the  Protestant  party  sensible  of 
an  externally  fortified  ground  of  combat,  in  that 
same  proportion  did   Protestantism  seek,  by  the 


358  WHO    WROTE    THE  BIBLE? 

exaltation  of  the  outward  authoritative  character 
of  the  Sacred  Writings,  to  recover  that  infallible 
authority  which  it  had  lost  through  its  rejection 
of  infallible  councils  and  the  infallible  authority  of 
the  Pope.  In  this  manner  arose,  not  earlier  tJian 
the  seveiiteejith  century^  those  sentiments  which 
regarded  the  Holy  Scripture  as  the  infallible  pro- 
duction of  the  Divine  Spirit  —  in  its  entire  con- 
tents and  its  very  form — so  that  not  only  the 
sense  but  also  the  words,  the  letters,  the  Hebrew 
vowel  points,  and  the  very  punctuation  were  re- 
garded as  proceeding  from  the  Spirit  of  God."  ^ 
The  fact  that  the  doctrine  had  this  origin  is  itself 
suspicious.  A  theory  which  is  framed  in  the 
heat  of  a  great  controversy,  by  one  party  in  the 
church,  is  apt  to  be  somewhat  extreme. 

The  strength  of  the  doctrine  lies,  however,  in 
the  fact  that  it  is  a  theological  inference  from  the 
doctrine  of  God.  *'  God  is  the  author  of  the 
Bible,"  men  have  said  ;  "  God  is  omniscient  ;  he 
can  make  no  mistakes  ;  therefore  the  Book  must 
be  infallible.  To  deny  that  it  is  infallible  is  to 
deny  that  it  is  God's  book  ;  if  it  is  not  his  book 
it  is  worthless."  Or,  putting  it  in  another  form, 
they  have  said,  **  The  Bible  is  an  inspired  book. 
God  is  the  source  of  inspiration.  He  cannot  in- 
spire men  to  write  error.  Therefore  every  word 
of  the  inspired  book  must  be  true."  This  is  what 
the  logicians  call  an  a  priori  argument.  The 
view  of  what  inspiration  is,  and  of  what  the  Bible 

1   Theological  Essays,  cuUected  by  George  R.  Noyes. 


I/O IV  MUCH  fS    77 /E   lUliLE   ll'OA'TJ/ f       359 

is,  are  deduced  from  our  theory  of  God.  It 
amounts  to  just  this:  If  God  is  what  we  think 
him  to  be,  he  must  do  what  seems  wise  to  us. 
This  is  hardly  a  safe  argument.  Doubtless  we 
would  have  said  beforehand  that  if  God,  who  is 
all-wise  and  all-powerful,  should  create  a  world, 
he  would  make  one  free  from  suffering  and  every 
form  of  evil.  We  find,  however,  that  he  has  not 
made  such  a  world.  And  it  may  be  wiser  for  us, 
instead  of  making  up  our  minds  beforehand  what 
God  must  do,  to  try  and  find  out  what  he  has 
done.  It  might  seem  to  us,  doubtless,  that  if  he 
has  given  us  a  revelation,  it  must  be  a  faultless 
revelation.  But  has  he  }  That  is  the  question. 
We  can  only  know  by  studying  the  revelation  it- 
self. We  have  no  right  to  determine  beforehand 
what  it  must  be.  We  might  have  said  with  equal 
confidence,  that  if  God  wished  to  have  his  truth 
taught  in  the  world,  he  would  certainly  send 
infallible  teachers.  He  has  not  done  so.  The 
treasure  of  his  truth  is  in  earthen  vessels,  to-day. 
Has  it  not  always  been  so  } 

The  trouble  in  this  whole  matter  arises  from 
the  fact  that  men  have  made  up  their  theories  of 
the  Bible  out  of  their  ideas  about  God,  and  have 
then  gone  to  work  to  fit  the  facts  of  the  Bible  to 
their  preconceived  theories.  This  has  required  a 
great  deal  of  stretching  and  twisting  and  lopping 
off  here  and  there  ;  the  truth  has  been  badly  dis- 
torted, sometimes  mutilated.  The  changed  view 
of  the  Bible,  which  greatly  alarms  some  good  peo- 


k 


360  IV//0    WROTE    THE  BIBLE? 

pie,  arises  from  the  fact  that  certain  honest  men 
have  determined  to  go  directly  to  the  Bible  itself 
and  find  out  by  studying  it  what  manner  of  book 
it  is.  They  have  discovered  that  it  is  not  pre- 
cisely such  a  book  as  it  has  been  believed  to  be, 
and  the  answer  that  they  make  to  those  who  hold 
the  old  theory  about  it  is  simply  this  :  "  We  can- 
not believe  what  you  have  told  us  about  the 
Bible,  because  the  Bible  contradicts  you.  It  is 
because  we  believe  the  Bible  itself  that  we  reject 
your  theory.  We  believe  that  the  Bible  is  an 
inspired  book,  nay,  that  it  is  by  eminence  The 
Inspired  Book;  but  when  you  ask  us  *What  is 
an  inspired  book  } '  instead  of  making  up  a  defini- 
tion of  inspiration  out  of  our  own  heads,  we  only 
say,  *  It  is  such  a  book  as  the  Bible  is,'  and  then 
we  proceed  to  frame  our  definition  of  inspiration 
by  the  study  of  the  Bible.  Therefore,  when  you 
I  say  that  inspiration  must  imply  infallibility,  we 
1]  answer,  No  ;  it  does  not ;  for  here  is  The  In- 
'*  spired  Book  and  it  is  not  infallible." 

In  what  sense  the  book  is  inspired  we  may  be 
able,  after  a  little,  to  see  more  clearly.  For  the 
present  I  only  desire  to  point  out  the  sources  of 
the  traditional  doctrine  of  the  Bible,  and  the 
sources  of  the  new  doctrine.  The  one  is  the  re- 
sult of  the  speculations  of  men  about  what  the 
Bible  must  be  ;  the  other  is  the  result  of  a  care- 
ful and  reverent  study  of  the  Bible  itself. 
What,  then,  do  we  find  the  Bible  to  be  } 
I.  It  is  the  book  of  righteousness.     No  other 


I/OIV  MUCH  IS    THE  BIBLE  WORTH?      361 

book  in  the  world  fixes  our  thoughts  so  steadily 
upon  the  great  interest  of  character.     Whatever 
else  the  l^ible  may  show  us  or  may  fail  to  show 
us,  it  does  keep  always  before  us  the  fact  that 
the  one  great  concern  of  every  man  is  to  be  right 
in  heart   and  in  life.     Righteousness  tendeth  to 
life  ;  righteousness  is  salvation  ;  Jehovah   is  He 
who   loveth    righteousness    and    hateth    iniquity, 
and    in    his  favor   is  life  ;  these    are  the  truths 
which  form  the  very  substance  of  this  revelation. 
It   is  quite  true   that  in   the  application  of  this 
principle   to   the  affairs  of  every  day,  the  early 
records  show  us  much  confusion  and  uncertainty  ; 
the  definitions  of  righteousness  which  sufficed  for 
the  people  of  that  time  would  not  suffice  for  us 
at  all  ;  but  the  fact  remains  that  the  only  inter- 
est of  this  Book  in  the  individuals  and  the  races 
which  it    brings    before    us    is    in    their  loyalty 
or  disloyalty  to  that   ideal   of    conduct  which   it 
always     lifts    up    before    us.     Righteousness    is 
life  ;  righteousness  is  salvation  ;  this  is  the  one 
message  of   the  Bible  to  men.     There  are  rites 
and  ceremonies,    but    these   are   not   the  princi- 
pal thing  ;  "  To  obey  is  better  than  sacrifice,  and 
to  hearken   than  the    fat    of   rams."     "  He  hath 
rhowed   thee,   O   man,   what  is   good  ;  and  what 
doth  the  Lord  require  of  thee,  but  to  do  justly, 
and  to  love  mercy,  and  to  walk  humbly  with  thy 
God.?"     This  great  truth  of  the  Bible  has  been 
but  imperfectly  apprehended,  even  among  mod- 
ern Christians;  there    is  always   a  tendency  to 


362  IVIIO    WROTE    THE  BIBLE? 

make  the  belief  in  sound  dogma,  or  the  per- 
formance of  decorous  rites,  or  the  experience  of 
emotional  raptures  the  principal  thing ;  but  the 
testimony  of  the  Bible  to  the  supremacy  of  char- 
acter and  conduct  is  clear  and  convincing,  and 
the  world  is  coming  to  understand  it. 

Now  for  any  man  who  cares  for  the  right,  to 
whom  character  is  more  precious  than  anything 
else  in  the  world,  this  book  is  worth  more  than 
any  other  book  can  be.  Even  the  Old  Testa- 
ment narratives,  indistinctly  as  they  reveal  the 
real  nature  of  true  conduct  to  us  in  this  day, 
show  us  plainly  the  fact  that  nothing  else  in  the 
world  is  to  be  compared  with  it  ;  and  the  strus^- 
gles  and  temptations  of  the  heroes  of  that  old 
book  are  full  of  instruction  for  us  ;  their  failures 
and  follies  and  sins  admonish  and  warn  us  ;  their 
steadfastness  and  fidelity  inspire  and  hearten  us. 

II.  The  Bible  is  the  record  of  the  development 
of  the  kingdom  of  righteousness  in  the  world. 
Man  knows  intuitively  that  he  ought  to  do  right ; 
his  notion  of  what  is  right  is  continually  being 
purified  and  enlarged.  The  Bible  is  the  record 
of  this  moral  progress  in  the  one  nation  of  the 
earth  to  which  morality  has  been  the  great  con- 
cern. We  have  seen,  clearly  enough,  the  imper- 
fection of  the  ethical  standards  to  which  the  early 
Hebrew  legislation  was  made  to  conform  ;  we 
have  also  seen  that  this  legislation  was  always  a 
little  in  advance  of  the  popular  morality,  leading 
it  on  to  purer  conceptions  and  better  practices. 


//oir  MUCH  IS  the  bible  worth?     363 

The  legislation  concerning  divorce,  the  legislation 
regulating  blood-vengeance,  recognizes  the  evils 
with  which  it  deals  and  accommodates  itself  to 
them,  but  always  with  the  purpose  and  the  result 
of  giving  to  men  a  larger  thought  and  a  better 
standard.  Laws  which  conformed  to  our  m viral 
ideal  would  have  been  powerless  to  control  such  a 
semi-barbarous  people  as  the  Hebrews  were  when 
they  came  out  of  Egypt.  The  higher  morality 
must  be  imparted  little  by  little  ;  one  principle 
after  another  must  be  drilled  into  their  apprehen- 
sion ;  they  could  not  well  be  learning  more  than 
one  or  two  simple  lessons  at  a  time,  and  while 
they  were  learning  these,  other  coarse  and  cruel 
and  savage  practices  of  theirs  must  be  "winked 
at,"  as  Paul  says.  Against  any  rule  more  strict 
at  this  early  time  the  Hebrews  would  have  re- 
volted ;  the  divine  wisdom  of  this  legislation  is 
seen  in  this  method  which  takes  men  as  they  are, 
and  does  for  them  the  thing  that  is  feasible,  pa- 
tiently leading  them  on  and  up  to  higher  ground. 
If  you  would  seize  a  running  horse  by  the  rein  and 
stop  him,  you  had  better  run  with  him  for  a 
little.  This  homely  parable  illustrates  much  of 
the  Old  Testament  legislation  which  we  find  so 
defective,  when  judged  by  our  standards. 

It  is  in  this  larger  sense  that  we  see  the  signs 
of  divinity  in  this  old  Book.  It  is  a  book  of  in- 
spiration because  it  is  the  record  of  an  inspired 
or  divinely  guided  development ;  because  the  life 
it  shows  as  unfolding  is  divine  ;  because  the  goal 


364  ^^^O    WROTE    THE   BIBLE? 

to  which  we  see  the  people  steadily  conducted  in 
its  vivid  chapters  is  the  goal  which  God  has 
marked  for  human  progress  ;  because  it  gives  us 
the  origin  and  growth  of  the  kingdom  of  God  in 
the  world. 

"  Whence  came,"  asks  one,  "  and  of  what  man- 
ner of  spirit  is  this  anti-historic  power  in  Israel 
and  the  Bible  ?  Some  inner  principle  of  devel- 
opment struggles  against  the  outward  historical 
environment,  and  will  not  rest  until  it  prevails. 
What  was  it  which  selected  Israel,  and  in  one 
narrow  land,  while  all  the  surrounding  country 
was  sinking,  lifted  man  up  in  spite  of  himself } 
which  along  the  course  of  one  national  history 
carried  on  a  progressive  development  of  religious 
life  and  truth,  while  other  peoples,  though  taught 
by  many  wise  men  and  seers,  and  not  without 
their  truths,  still  can  show  no  one  connected  and 
progressive  revelation  like  this  ?  "  ^ 

What  is  the  power  that  has  wrought  all  this 
but  the  divine  Power?  If  you  ask  for  a  proof  of 
the  existence  of  God,  I  point  you  to  the  life  of 
the  Jewish  people  as  the  Bible  records  it.  That 
history  is  the  revelation  of  God.  In  the  record  of 
this  nation's  life,  in  its  privileges  and  its  vicissi- 
tudes, its  captivities  and  its  restorations,  its  bless- 
ings and  its  chastenings,  its  institutions  and  its 
laws,  its  teachers  and  its  legislators,  its  seers  and 
its  lawgivers,  in  all  the  forces  that  combine  to 
make  up  the  great    movement  of   the  national 

1  Old  Faiths  in  New  Lights  p.  Si. 


I/O IV  MUCH  IS    THE  BIBLE  WORTH?      365 

life,  I  see  God  present  all  the  while,  shapino^  the 
ends  of  this  nation,  no  matter  how  perversely  it 
may  rough-hew  them,  till  at  last  it  stands  on  an 
elevation  far  above  the  other  nations,  breathing  a 
better  atmosphere,  thinking  worthier  and  more 
spiritual  thoughts  of  God,  obeying  a  far  purer 
moral  law,  holding  fast  a  nobler  ideal  of  right- 
eousness,—  polytheism  gradually  and  finally 
rooted  out  of  the  national  consciousness ;  the 
family  established  and  honored  as  in  no  other 
nation  ;  woman  lifted  up  to  a  dignity  and  purity 
known  nowhere  else  in  the  world  ;  the  Sabbath 
of  rest  sanctified  ;  the  principles  of  the  decalogue 
fastened  in  the  convictions  of  the  people,  the 
sure  foundations  laid  of  the  kingdom  of  God  in 
the  world. 

We  are  quite  too  apt  unduly  to  disparage  Juda- 
ism. Doubtless  the  formalism  that  our  Lord 
found  in  it  needed  rebuke ;  its  worship  and  its 
morality  were  yet  far  away  from  the  ideal  when 
Jesus  came  to  earth  ;  nevertheless,  compared  with 
all  the  peoples  round  about  them  even  then  — 
compared  with  classic  Greeks  and  noble  Romans 
—  the  ethical  and  spiritual  development  of  the 
Jews  had  reached  a  higher  stage.  It  is  not  ex- 
travagant to  claim  for  this  race  the  moral  leader- 
ship of  the  world.  Hear  Ernest  Renan,  no  cham- 
pion of  orthodoxy,  as  you  know  :  **  I  am  eager, 
gentlemen,"  —  I  quote  from  a  lecture  of  his  on 
"The  Share  of  the  Semitic  People  in  the  History 
of  Civilization,"  —  "  to  come  at   the   prime  ser- 


366  IVBO    WROTE    THE  BIBLE? 

vice  which  the  Semitic  race  has  rendered  to  the 
world ;  its  peculiar  work,  its  providential  mis- 
sion, if  I  may  so  express  myself.  We  owe  to 
the  Semitic  race  neither  political  life,  art,  poe- 
try, philosophy,  nor  science.  We  oive  to  them 
religioji.  The  whole  world  —  we  except  India, 
China,  Japan,  and  tribes  altogether  savage  —  Jias 
adopted  tJie  Semitic  religions^  Speaking  then 
of  the  gradual  decay  of  the  various  pagan  faiths 
of  the  Aryan  races,  Renan  continues :  "  It  is 
precisely  at  this  epoch  that  the  civilized  world 
finds  itself  face  to  face  with  the  Jewish  faith. 
Based  upon  the  clear  and  simple  dogma  of  the 
divine  unity,  discarding  naturalism  and  panthe- 
ism by  the  marvelously  terse  phrase,  *  In  the  be- 
ginning God  created  the  heavens  and  the  earth,' 
possessing  a  law,  a  book,  the  depository  of  grand 
moral  precepts  and  of  an  elevated  religious  poetry, 
Judaism  had  an  incontestable  superiority,  and  it 
might  have  been  foreseen  then  that  some  day  the 
world  would  become  Jewish,  that  is  to  say,  would 
forsake  the  old  mythology  for  monotheism."  ^ 

Here  is  the  testimony  of  a  man  who  can  be 
suspected  of  no  undue  leanings  toward  the  re- 
ligion of  the  Bible,  to  the  fact  that  the  world  is 
indebted  for  its  great  thoughts  of  religion  to  the 
Semitic  races,  and  chiefly  to  the  Hebrew  race  ; 
that  the  religion  of  Judaism,  brought  into  com- 
parison with  the  other  religions,  is  incontcstably 
superior.     Now  any  man  who  believes  in  religion 

^  Religious  History  and  Criticism,  pp.  159,  160. 


now  MUCH  IS    TIJK  lilBLE   WORTH ^      367 

and  in  God  must  believe  that  the  people  to  whom 
such  a  task  was  committed  must  have  been 
trained  by  God  to  perform  it.  The  history  of 
this  nation  will  then  be  the  history  of  this  train- 
ing. That  is  exactly  what  the  Old  Testament 
is.  No  disputes  over  the  nature  of  inspiration 
must  be  suffered  to  obscure  this  great  fact.  The 
Old  Testament  Scriptures  do  contain  in  biog- 
raphy and  history,  in  statute  and  story  and  song 
and  sermon,  the  records  of  the  life  of  the  na- 
tion to  which  God  at  sundry  times  and  in  divers 
manners  was  revealing  himself ;  which  he  was 
preparing  to  be  the  bearer  of  the  torch  of  his 
own  truth  into  all  the  world.  And  now  I  ask 
whether  anybody  needs  to  be  told  that  these 
records  are  precious,  precious  above  all  price  } 
Are  there  any  authentic  portions  of  them  that 
any  man  can  afford  to  despise  1  Is  not  every 
step  in  the  progress  of  this  people  out  of  savagery 
into  a  spiritual  faith,  matter  of  the  profoundest 
interest  to  every  human  soul  }  Even  the  dull- 
ness and  ignorance  and  crudity  of  this  people,  — 
even  the  crookedness  and  blindness  of  their  lead- 
ers and  teachers,  are  full  of  instruction  for  us  ; 
they  show  us  with  what  materials  and  what 
instruments  the  divine  wisdom  and  patience 
wrought  out  this  great  result.  What  other  book 
is  there  that  can  compare  in  value  with  this  book, 
which  tells  us  the  way  of  God  with  the  people 
whom  he  chose,  as  Renan  declares,  to  teach  the 
world  religion  ?    And  when  one  has  firmly  grasped 


368  IVI/O    WROTE    THE  BIBLE? 

this  great  fact,  that  the  Bible  contains  the  history 
of  the  rcHgious  development  of  the  Jewish  peo- 
ple under  providential  care  and  tuition,  how  little 
is  he  troubled  by  the  small  difficulties  which  grow 
out  of  theories  of  inspiration  !  "  We  can  listen," 
says  Dr.  Newman  Smyth,  *'  with  incurious  com- 
placency while  small  disputants  discuss  vehe- 
mently the  story  of  the  ark  or  Jonah's  strange 
adventure.  .  .  .  After  all  the  work  of  the  critics, 
the  Bible  still  remains,  the  great,  sublime,  endur- 
ing work  of  the  Eternal  who  loves  righteousness 
and  hates  iniquity."  ^ 

But  what  have  I  been  vindicating }  The  Bible  ? 
Nay,  I  have  carefully  restricted  my  argument  to 
the  Old  Testament.  It  is  in  behalf  of  the  Old 
Testament  writings  alone  that  I  have  sought  to 
establish  this  exalted  claim.  What  I  have  shown 
you  is  only  the  pedestal  on  which  the  beauty  and 
strength  of  the  Bible  rests,  the  enduring  portals 
which  open  into  the  glory  that  excelleth.  The 
Old  Testament  shows  us  the  progressive  revela- 
tion of  God  to  the  Jewish  people  ;  the  New  Tes- 
tament gives  us  the  consummation  of  that  work, 
the  perfect  flower  of  that  growth  of  centuries. 
After  shadows  and  hints  and  refracted  lights  of 
prophecy,  breaks  at  last  upon  the  world  the  Light 
that  lighteth  every  man  !  When  the  fullness  of 
time  had  come,  God  sent  forth  his  Son.  It  was 
for  this  that  the  age-long  discipline  of  this  people 
had  been  preparing  them.     True,  *'  He  came  to 

1  Old  Faiths  i?i  New  Light,  pp.  60,  61. 


I/O IV  MUCH  IS   THE  BIBLE  WORTH?      369 

his  own,  and  they  received  him  not,"  but  where 
else  in  the  world  would  the  seed  of  his  kingdom 
have  found  any  lodgment  at  all  ?  The  multitude 
rejected  him,  but  there  was  a  remnant  who  did 
receive  him,  and  to  whom  he  gave  power  to  be- 
come the  sons  of  God.  So  the  word  of  God,  that 
had  been  painfully  and  dimly  communicated  to 
the  ancient  people  in  laws  and  ordinances  and 
prophecies,  in  providential  mercies  and  chasten- 
ings,  in  lives  of  saints  and  prophets  and  martyrs, 
was  now  made  flesh,  and  dwelt  among  men  full 
of  grace  and  truth,  and  they  beheld  his  glory. 

It  is  here  that  we  find  the  real  meaning  of  the 
Bible.  "  The  end,"  as  Canon  Mozley  has  so 
strongly  shown,  "is  the  test  of  a  progressive  ' 
revelation."  Jesus  Christ,  who  is  himself  the 
Word,  toward  whom  these  laws  and  prophecies 
point,  and  in  whom  they  culminate,  is  indeed  the 
perfect  Revelation  of  God.  From  his  judgment 
there  is  no  appeal  ;  at  his  feet  the  wisest  of  us 
must  sit  and  learn  the  .way  of  life.  With  his 
words  all  these  old  Scriptures  must  be  compared  ; 
so  far  as  they  agree  with  his  teachings  we  may 
take  them  as  eternal  truth ;  those  portions  of 
them  which  fall  below  this  standard,  we  may 
pass  by  as  a  partial  revelation  upon  us  no  longer 
binding.  He  himself  has  given  us,  in  the  Ser- 
mon on  the  Mount,  the  method  by  which  we  are 
to  test  the  older  Scriptures.  When  we  refuse  to 
apply  his  method  and  go  on  to  declare  every  por- 
tion of  those  old  records  authoritative,  we  are  not 


\ 


370  WHO  WROTE  the  bible? 

honorincc  him.  The  mischief  and  bane  of  the 
traditional  theory  is  that  it  equalizes  things  which 
are  utterly  unlike.  When  it  says  that  *'  all  the 
books  of  the  Scripture  are  equally  inspired  ;  all 
alike  are  infallible  in  what  they  teach,"  it  puts 
the  Gospels  on  the  same  level  with  Deuteronomy 
and  Ecclesiastes  and  Esther.  The  effect  of  this 
is  not  to  lift  the  latter  up,  but  to  drag  the  former 
down.  They  are  not  on  the  same  level  ;  it  is 
treason  to  our  Master  Christ  to  say  that  they  are 
alike ;  the  one  is  as  much  higher  than  the  other 
as  the  heavens  are  higher  than  the  earth. 

It  is  here,  then,  in  the  simple  veracious  records 
that  bring  before  us  the  life  of  Christ,  that  we 
have  the  very  Word  of  God.  Whatever  else  the 
four  Gospels  may  or  may  not  be,  they  certainly 
do  contain  the  story  of  the  Life  that  has  been  for 
many  centuries  the  light  and  the  hope  of  the 
world.  It  is  the  same  unique  Person  who  stands 
before  us  in  every  one  of  these  narratives,  — 

"  So  meek,  forgiving,  godlike,  high, 
So  glorious  in  humility." 

What  fault  has  criticism  to  find  with  this  Life  } 
What  word  or  deed  is  here  ascribed  to  him  that 
is  not  worthy  of  him,  that  is  not  like  him  }  Is  it 
any  wonder  to  us  when  we  read  this  record 
through,  that  the  guileless  Nathanael  cried  out 
as  he  communed  with  him,  "  Rabbi,  thou  art  the 
Son  of  God,  thou  art  the  King  of  Israel." 

If,  then,  the  New  Testament  gives  us  the  art- 
less record  of  the  life  and  words   of  this  divine 


i/oir  MUCH  IS  the  iuble  wok  Tin     371 

Person,  the  Son  of  God  and  the  Saviour  of  tlie 
world  ;  if  it  brinL;s  Him  before  us  and  manifests 
to  us,  so  far  as  words  can  do  it,  his  power  and 
his  glory  ;  if  it  shows  us  how,  by  bearing  witness 
to  the  truth  in  his  life  and  in  his  death,  he  estab- 
lished in  the  world  the  kingdom  which  for  long 
ages  had  been  preparing  ;  if  it  makes  known  to 
us  the  messages  he  brought  of  pardon  and  salva- 
tion ;  if  it  gives  us  the  record  of  the  planting  and 
training  of  his  church  in  the  early  ages,  is  there 
any  need  that  I  should  go  about  to  praise  and 
magnify  its  worth  to  the  children  of  men  ?  If  light 
is  worth  anything  to  those  who  sit  in  darkness,  or 
hope  to  those  who  are  oppressed  with  tormenting 
doubt ;  if  wisdom  is  to  be  desired  by  those  who 
are  in  perplexity,  and  comfort  by  those  who  are 
in  trouble,  and  peace  by  those  whose  hearts  are 
full  of  strife,  and  forgiveness  by  those  who  bear 
the  burden  of  sin  ;  if  strength  is  a  good  gift  to 
the  weak,  and  rest  to  the  weary,  and  heaven  to 
the  dying,  and  the  eternal  life  of  God  to  the  faint- 
ing soul  of  man,  then  the  book  that  tells  us  of 
Jesus  Christ  and  his  salvation  is  not  to  be  com- 
pared wqth  any  other  book  on  earth  for  precious- 
ness ;  it  is  the  one  book  that  every  one  of  us 
ought  to  know  by  heart. 

The  value  of  the  Bible,  the  greatness  of  the 
Bible,  are  in  this  Life  that  it  discloses  to  us.  "  It 
is  upon  Jesus,"  says  a  modern  rationalist,  "  that 
the  whole  Bible  turns.  In  this  lies  the  value, 
not  only  of  the  New  Testament,  a  great  part  of 


372  WHO    WROTE    THE  BIBLE? 

which  refers  to  him  directly,  but  of  the  Old  Tes- 
.tament  as  well."  Rationalist  though  he  is,  no 
Iman  could  have  stated  the  truth  more  clearly. 
**  It  is  upon  Jesus  that  the  whole  Bible  turns." 
The  Old  Testament  shows  us  the  way  prepanng 
by  which  the  swift  feet  of  the  messengers  ap- 
proach that  tell  us  of  his  coming ;  the  New  Tes- 
tament lifts  the  veil  and  bids  us,  Behold  the  man  ! 
The  Bible  is  of  value  to  us,  just  in  proportion  as 
it  helps  us  to  see  him,  to  know  him,  to  trust  him. 
You  may  have  a  cast-iron  theory  of  inspiration 
with  every  joint  riveted ;  you  may  believe  in  the 
infallible  accuracy  of  every  vowel  point  and  every 
punctuation  mark  ;  but  if  the  Bible  does  not 
bring  you  into  a  vital  union  with  Jesus  Christ,  so 
that  you  have  his  mind  and  follow  in  his  foot- 
steps, it  profiteth  yoii  nothing.  And  if,  by  your 
study  of  it,  you  are  brought  into  this  saving  fel- 
lowship, your  theories  of  inspiration  will  take 
care  of  themselves. 

I  fear  that  we  do  not  always  comprehend  the 
fact  that  it  is  this  divine  Life  shining  out  of  its 
pages  that  makes  the  Bible  glorious.  We  strain 
our  eyes  so  much  in  verifying  commas,  and  in  try- 
ing to  prove  that  the  dot  of  a  certain  i  is  not  a 
fly-speck,  that  we  fail  to  get  much  impression  of 
the  meaning  or  the  beauty  of  the  Saviour's  life. 
See  those  two  critics,  with  their  eyes  close  to 
the  wonderful  '*  Ecce  Homo  "  of  Correggio,  dis- 
puting whether  there  is  or  is  not  a  visible  stitch 
in  the  garment  of  Christ  that  ought  to  be  seam- 


I/OW  MUCH  IS   TIJK  lUnLE  WORTH?      373 

less.  How  red  their  faces  ;  how  hot  their  words  ! 
Stand  back  a  little,  brothers  !  look  away,  for  a 
moment,  from  the  garment's  seam  ;  let  the  in- 
finite pain  and  the  infinite  pity  and  the  infinite 
yearning  of  that  Face  dawn  on  you  for  a  moment, 
and  you  will  cease  your  quarreling.  So,  not  sel- 
dom, do  the  idolaters  of  the  letter  wholly  miss 
the  meaning  of  the  sacred  book,  and  remain  in 
mournful  ignorance  of  him  who  himself  is  the 
Word. 

There  are  those  to  whom  the  view  of  the  Bible 
presented  in  these  chapters  seems  not  only  in-( 
adequate  but  destructive.  "  If  the  Bible  is  notl 
infallible,"  they  say,  "  it  is  no  more  than  anyl 
other  book  ;  we  have  no  further  use  for  it."  Inl 
one  of  the  leading  church  reviews  I  find  these 
words,  the  joint  utterance  of  two  eminent  Ameri- 
can theologians  :  "  A  proved  error  in  Scripture 
contradicts  not  only  our  doctrine  but  the  Scrip- 
ture's claims,  and  therefore  its  inspiration  in 
making  those  claims."  ^  A  proved  error  in  Scrip- 
ture stamps  the  book  as  fraudulent  and  worthless  ! 
Worthless  it  is  then  !  Proved  errors  there  are, 
scores  of  them.  It  is  fatuity,  it  is  imbecility,  to 
deny  it.  And  every  man  who  can  find  an  error 
in  these  old  writings  has  the  warrant  of  these 
teachers  for  throwing  the  book  away.  Tens  of 
thousands  of  ingenuous  and  fair-minded  men 
have  taken  the  word  of  such  teachers,  and  have 
thrown  the  book  away.  May  God  forgive  the 
folly  of  these  blind  guides  ! 

*  Presbyterian  Rcviciv^  vol.  ii.  p.  245. 


374  ^^^O    WROTE    THE  BIBLE? 

But  what  stupid  reasoning  is  this  !  "  If  the 
Bible  is  not  infallible,  it  is  worthless."  Your 
watch  is  not  infallible  ;  is  it  therefore  worthless  ? 
Your  physician  is  not  infallible ;  are  his  services 
therefore  worthless  ?  Your  father  is  not  infal- 
lible ;  are  his  counsels  worthless  ?  Will  you  say 
that  the  moment  you  discover  in  him  an  error 
concerning  any  subject  in  heaven  or  on  earth, 
that  moment  you  will  refuse  to  listen  to  his  coun- 
sel ?  The  church  of  God  is  not  infallible,  and 
never  was,  whatever  infatuated  ecclesiastics  may 
have  claimed  for  it  ;  are  its  solemn  services  and 
its  inspiring  labors  and  its  uplifting  fellowships 
worthless  ? 

"A  ship  on  a  lee  shore,"  says  one,  "in  the 
midst  of  a  dri^ving  storm,  throws  up  signal  rock- 
ets or  fires  a  gun  for  a  pilot.  A  white  sail 
emerges  from  the  mist ;  it  is  the  pilot  boat.  A 
man  climbs  on  board,  and  the  captain  gives  to 
him  the  command  of  the  ship.  All  his  orders 
are  obeyed  implicitly.  The  ship,  laden  with  a 
precious  cargo  and  hundreds  of  human  lives,  is 
confided  to  a  rough-looking  man  whom  no  one 
ever  saw  before,  who  is  to  guide  them  through  a 
narrow  channel,  where  to  vary  a  few  fathoms  to 
the  right  or  left  will  be  utter  destruction.  The 
pilot  is  invested  with  absolute  authority  as  re- 
gards bringing  the  vessel  into  port."  ^  Is  this 
because  the  man    is   infallible,   because    he  has 

1  Orthodoxy ;  its  Truths  and  Errors,  by  James  Freeman 
Clarke,  p.  114. 


I/O IV  ML'CII  IS    THE   BIBLE   WORTH f       375 

never  been  detected  in  holding  an  erroneous 
opinion  ?  Doubtless  any  of  these  intelligent  pas- 
sengers could  find  out,  by  half  an  hour's  conver- 
sation with  him,  that  his  mind  was  full  of  crass 
ignorance  and  misconception.  And  nobody  sup- 
poses that  he  is  infallible,  even  as  a  pilot.  He 
may  make  a  mistake.  What  then  ?  Will  these 
passengers  gather  "  around  the  captain,  and  de- 
mand that  he  be  ordered  down  from  the  bridge 
and  thrown  overboard  if  he  disobeys  ?  Will  they 
say,  "  A  pilot  who  is  not  on  all  subjects  infalli- 
ble is  one  whom  we  will  not  trust  1 "  No  ;  they 
believe  him  to  be,  not  omniscient,  but  competent 
and  trustworthy,  and  a  great  burden  is  lifted 
from  their  hearts  when  they  see  him  take  com- 
mand of  the  ship.  On  all  other  subjects  besides 
religion,  people  are  able  to  exercise  their  common 
sense;  why  can  they  not  use  a  modicum  of  the 
same  common  sense  when  they  come  to  deal 
with  religious  truth  } 

It  is  not  true,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  that  the  / 
Bible  no  longer  has  any  value  for  those  who  have 
ceased  to  hold  the  traditional  view  of  it.  Not 
seldom,  indeed,  those  who  have  been  compelled 
by  overwhelming  evidence  to  relinquish  the  tra-  / 
ditional  view  have  been  driven  by  the  natural  re- 
action against  it  to  undervalue  the  Bible,  and 
even  to  treat  it  with  contempt  and  bitterness  ; 
but  even  some  of  these  have  come  back  to  it 
again  and  have  found  in  it,  when  they  studied  it 
with  open  mind,  more  truth  than  they  ever  be- 


376  WHO    WROTE    THE  BIBLE? 

fore  had  known.  Let  me  cite  an  extreme  case. 
I  could  take  you  to  a  society  of  free-thinkers, 
consisting  of  people  who  have  long  been  out- 
spoken in  their  rejection  of  all  the  doctrines  of 
historical  Christianity,  many  of  whom  formerly 
flouted  the  Bible  as  a  book  of  fables,  but  who  are 
now  studying  it  diligently  week  by  week,  in  the 
most  sympathetic  spirit.  They  do  not  now  ac- 
cept its  supernaturalism  ;  but  they  believe  that 
as  a  manual  of  conduct,  as  a  guide  to  life,  it  ex- 
cels all  other  books.  The  young  people  of  their 
Sunday-school  are  told  that  the  Bible  is  not  like 
other  books  ;  that  the  men  who  wrote  it  knew 
more  about  the  human  soul  and  its  struggles  and 
its  aspirations  after  good  than  any  other  men 
who  ever  lived ;  and  they  are  besought  to  attend, 
most  carefully,  to  the  lessons  of  life  which  this 
ancient  book  teaches.  I  should  like  to  take  some 
of  our  ultra  orthodox  friends,  who  are  pettishly 
crying  out  that  the  Bible,  if  not  infallible,  is  good 
for  nothing,  and  set  them  down  for  a  Sunday  or 
two  in  the  midst  of  this  free-thinking  Sunday- 
school  ;  they  might  learn  some  things  about  its 
value  that  they  never  knew  before. 

This  incident  ought  to  be  of  service,  also,  to 
those  who,  having  discovered  that  the  Bible  con- 
tains human  elements,  have  rushed  to  the  conclu- 
sion that  it  is  no  more  than  any  other  book,  and 
who,  although  they  do  not  cast  it  from  them, 
hold  it  off,  at  arm's  length,  as  it  were,  and  main- 
tain toward  it  an  attitude  of  critical  superiority. 


I/O IV  MUCH  IS    THE  BIBLE   WORTH?      377 

Even  these  free-thinkers  treat  it  more  fairly. 
They  are  learning  to  approach  it  with  open  mind  ; 
they  sit  down  before  it  with  reverent  expectancy. 
The  Bible  has  a  right  to  this  sympathetic  treat- 
ment. It  is  not  just  like  other  books.  Do  not 
take  my  word  for  this  ;  listen  rather  to  the  testi- 
mony of  one  who  was  known,  while  he  was  alive, 
as  the  arch-heretic  of  New  England  :  — 

"This  collection  of  books  has  taken  such  a 
hold  on  the  world  as  no  other.  The  literature  of 
Greece,  which  goes  up  like  incense  from  that 
land  of  temples  and  heroic  deeds,  has  not  half  the 
influence  of  this  book,  from  a  nation  alike  de- 
spised in  ancient  and  in  modern  times.  It  is 
read  of  a  Sabbath  in  all  the  ten  thousand  pulpits 
of  our  land.  In  all  the  temples  of  religion  is  its 
voice  lifted  up  week  by  week.  The  sun  never 
sets  on  its  gleaming  page.  It  goes  equally  to 
the  cottage  of  the  plain  man  and  the  palace  of 
the  king.  It  is  woven  into  the  literature  of  the 
scholar,  and  colors  the  talk  of  the  street.  The 
bark  of  the  merchant  cannot  sail  the  sea  without 
it  ;  no  ships  of  war  go  to  the  conflict,  but  the 
Bible  is  there.  #  It  enters  men's  closets  ;  mingles 
in  all  their  grief  and  cheerfulness  of  life.  The 
affianced  maiden  prays  God  in  Scripture  for 
strength  in  her  new  duties  ;  men  are  married  by 
Scripture.  The  Bible  attends  them  in  their  sick- 
ness, when  the  fever  of  the  world  is  on  them. 
The  aching  head  finds  a  softer  pillow  when  the 
Bible   lies    underneath.     The    mariner   escaping 


378  IVI/O    WROTE   THE  BIBLE? 

from  shipwreck  clutches  this  first  of  his  treas- 
ures and  keeps  it  sacred  to  God.  It  goes  with 
the  peddler  in  his  crowded  pack  ;  cheers  him  at 
eventide  when  he  sits  down  dusty  and  fatigued  ; 
brightens  the  freshness  of  his  morning  face.  It 
blesses  us  when  we  are  born,  gives  names  to  half 
Christendom  ;  rejoices  with  us ;  has  sympathy 
for  our  mourning  ;  tempers  our  grief  to  finer  is- 
sues. It  is  the  better  part  of  our  sermons.  It 
lifts  man  above  himself ;  our  best  of  uttered 
prayers  are  in  its  storied  speech,  wherewith  our 
fathers  and  the  patriarchs  prayed.  The  timid 
man,  about  awaking  from  this  dream  of  life,  looks 
through  the  glass  of  Scripture  and  his  eye  grows 
bright ;  he  does  not  fear  to  stand  alone,  to  tread 
the  way  unknown  and  distant,  to  take  the  death 
angel  by  the  hand  and  bid  farewell  to  wife  and 
babes  and  home.  Men  rest  on  this  their  dearest 
hopes  ;  it  tells  them  of  God  and  of  his  blessed 
Son,  of  earthly  duties  and  of  heavenly  rest."  ^ 

This  is  not  mere  rhetoric  ;  it  is  simplest  truth 
of  human  experience.  How  is  it  possible  for  any 
man  to  treat  this  book  just  as  he  would  any  other 
book  }  He  ought  to  come  to  its  perusal  with  the 
expectation  of  finding  in  it  wisdom  and  light  and 
life.  He  must  not  stultify  his  reason  and  stifle 
his  moral  sense  when  he  reads  it ;  he  must  keep 
his  mind  awake  and  his  conscience  active  ;  but 
there  is  treasure  here  if  he  will  search  for  it ; 
search  he  must,  yet  the  only  right  attitude  before 

^  Theodore  Parker,  Discourses  on  Religion. 


now  Mucir  is  the  iui^lk  worth  f    379 

it  is  one  of  reverence  and  trust.  Any  man  of 
ripe  wisdom  and  high  character,  who  has  been 
known  to  you  all  your  life,  whose  judgment  you 
have  verified,  whose  goodness  you  have  witnessed 
and  experienced,  commands  your  respectful  atten- 
tion the  moment  he  begins  to  speak.  You  do 
not  believe  him  to  be  infallible,  but  you  listen  to 
what  he  says  with  trustfulness  ;  you  expect  to 
find  it  true.  To  say  that  you  listen  to  him  as 
you  do  to  every  other  man  is  not  the  fact ;  the 
posture  of  your  mind  in  his  presence  is  different 
from  that  in  which  you  stand  before  most  other 
men.  It  ought  to  be.  He  has  gained,  by  his 
probity,  the  power  to  speak  to  you  with  author- 
ity. The  Bible  has  gained  the  same  power. 
You  do  not  use  it  fairly  when  you  use  it  as  you 
do  every  other  book. 

There  is  the  nation's  flag  proudly  flying  from 
the  summit  of  the  Capitol.  It  may  be  a  banner 
that  was  borne  upon  the  battlefield,  decorated 
now  with  well-mended  rents,  and  with  stains  of 
carnage.  "  Behold  it  !  "  cries  the  idolater.  "  It 
is  absolutely  faultless  in  perfection  and  beauty ! 
There  is  not  a  blemish  on  its  folds,  there  is  not 
an  imperfection  in  its  web  ;  every  thread  in  warp 
and  woof  is  flawless  ;  every  seam  is  absolutely 
straight ;  every  star  is  geometrically  accurate  ; 
every  proportion  is  exact ;  the  man  who  denies 
it  is  a  traitor  !  " 

"Absurd!"  replies  the  iconoclast.  "See  the 
holes  and  the  stains ;  there  is  not  one  straight 


380  ^^O    WROTE    THE  BIBLE? 

seam  ;  there  is  not  a  star  that  is  in  perfect  form  ; 
ravel  it,  and  you  will  find  no  thread  in  warp  or 
woof  that  is  flawless ;  nay,  you  may  even  dis- 
cover shreds  of  shoddy  mixed  with  the  fine  fibre. 
Your  flag  is  nothing  more  than  any  other  old 
piece  of  bunting,  and  if  you  think  it  is,  you  are 
a  fool." 

Nay,  good  friends,  you  are  both  wrong.  The 
blemishes  are  there  ;  it  would  be  fanaticism  to 
deny  them  ;  and  he  who  says  that  no  man  can 
be  loyal  to  the  nation  who  will  not  profess  that 
this  banner  is  immaculate  is  setting  up  a  fantas- 
tic standard  of  patriotism.  But,  on  the  other 
hand,  this  flag  is  something  more  than  any  other 
old  piece  of  bunting,  and  he  who  thinks  it  some- 
thing more  is  not  a  fool.  It  is  the  symbol  of 
liberty  ;  it  is  the  emblem  of  sovereignty  ;  it  is  the 
pledge  of  protection  ;  it  is  the  sign  and  guarantee 
of  justice  and  order  and  peace.  What  memories 
cluster  round  it,  of  dauntless  heroism,  and  holy 
sacrifice,  and  noble  consecration  !  What  hopes 
are  gleaming  from  its  stars  and  fluttering  in  its 
shining  folds  —  hopes  of  a  day  when  wars  shall 
be  no  more  and  all  mankind  shall  be  one  brother- 
hood !  The  man  to  whom  the  flag  of  his  country 
is  no  more  than  any  other  piece  of  weather- 
beaten  bunting  is  a  man  without  a  country. 

Is  not  my  parable  already  interpreted  }  Are 
not  the  idolaters  who  make  it  treason  to  disbe- 
lieve a  single  word  of  the  Bible,  and  the  icono- 
clasts who   treat   it  as  nothing  better  than  any 


//OJV  MUCH  /S   THE  BIBLE   WORTH?      38 1 

Other  book,  equally  far  from  the  truth  ?  Is  it  not 
the  part  of  wisdom  to  use  the  book  rationally,  but 
reverently  ;  to  refrain  from  worshiping  the  let- 
ter, but  to  rejoice  in  the  gifts  of  the  Spirit  which 
it  proffers  ?  The  same  divine  influence  which 
illumines  and  sanctifies  its  pages  is  waiting  to 
enlighten  our  minds  that  wc  may  comprehend  its 
words,  and  to  prepare  our  hearts  that  we  may  re- 
ceive its  messages.  Some  things  hard  to  under- 
stand are  here,  but  the  Spirit  of  truth  can  make 
plain  to  us  all  that  we  need  to  know.  No  man 
wisely  opens  the  book  who  does  not  first  lift  up 
his  heart  for  help  to  find  in  it  the  w^ay  of  life, 
and  to  him  who  studies  it  in  this  spirit  it  will 
show  the  salvation  of  God. 


Date  Due 

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BS511.G54 

Who  wrote  the  Bible?  :  a  book  for  the 


Princeton  Theological  Seminary-Speer  Library 


1    1012  00114  3850 


